


Molt

by saltpehg (milkthepig)



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M, I don't really do trigger warnings, but there are lots of things in here, so consider this a warning, that might make you anxious
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-05-01 07:51:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5198063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milkthepig/pseuds/saltpehg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(This is my strange twist on what happens Post-Mockingjay) In order to preserve Peeta's sanity, the memory of Katniss was completely erased from his mind. Now that he has returned to Twelve, Katniss must decide-press ahead and forge a new life without the people she loved, or get tangled up in the skeletons of her former life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Strangers

Three days ago had been the first time since I shot Coin (which was however many days/months/years ago, I don't know for sure) that I had seen Peeta Mellark and simultaneously the last time I would ever see him again. 

Until then, I had barely existed, walking the delicate line between life and death. I floated around the house as a living spectre and tried to stuff myself into the nooks and crannies and cobwebs in hopes that I would eventually fade from existence. I was shackled to the structure of that house in Victor's Village, and my soul refused to leave the premises. 

Of course, Sae visited nearly every day, but she learned over the months that doing her due diligence to leave food around, make sure I wasn’t living in squalor, and not ask questions was both of our best interests. Anything more was a waste of our time. Haymitch showed up every once in a while to make sure I was still alive, sometimes having to peel me out of a closet but those visits were both more than we could mentally process, so we avoided them as much as possible.

The night prior to seeing Peeta, I failed to off myself yet again by taking too many sedatives, and the following morning I awoke to a raging migraine, which was only superseded by the metallic screams of a shovel colliding with the barren soil of District 12. 

I shoved myself off the floor, a long string of drool pulling from the wood and connecting a wetness on the whole left side of my face to a large puddle at the foot of the bed. My arms were spindly sticks and they struggled under the small weight of the bag of organs I had become. It wasn't long before I came crashing back to the floor. When I struck the ground, I tasted blood, and my arm flailed, sending the plastic pill bottle flying across the room to collide with the wall. As it bounced to and fro, it sounded like the plastic chuckled at me. If I had the gumption to laugh (not that I necessarily had one to begin with), a single dead bark to signify how pitiful I had become would have escaped me. But I had been silent since my time in exile during the trial.

It had been even longer since I bothered to look in the mirror, so whatever hellbringer dug my grave that morning would have to accept my unwashed, barely-dressed, piss-off state. What ghoulish visage would I present them with on our journey to the underworld? It was only fitting I looked the nightmarish part.

After the third attempt, I managed to get to my feet. It took a while to get my bearings (this must be what Finnick had said about suffering from sea legs), and my head still spun as I spilled down the stairs in long droopy strings of molasses. Upon clutching the cold metal of the doorknob, I realized soon I was to meet my Maker. 

I scoffed at the dust. Everything was so damn grayscale. 

Surely this wasn't a nightmare—the metal in my hand and the throbbing of my malnourished brain felt so blissfully real, more so than it had in a long time—and the only other thing that could be outside waiting for me was my funeral procession. I knew there was but a single soul out there digging my grave, as a final retribution for all the other children he helped put in the ground. One single soul who was locked in an equally-debilitating prison of alcohol, tied to this dreadful mortal coil with the only other thing we shared in common: the sheer will of our bodies (against that of our souls') to survive. I only hoped that Haymitch had as few words as possible for a proper eulogy. 

The air was heady, a sharp rush through my trachea down to my lungs, pumping oxygen-rich blood from my heart to the rest of my limbs, and I felt giddy and alive for the first time: here was my sweet release. Disguised as the clanging of a shovel was the tolling of my death bells. There wasn't a grander sound in the world. 

I shoved open the door and stumbled over a basket. Two loaves of bread and a small bouquet of dandelions spilled from a carefully-folded cotton cloth and tumbled along the wood. It was dressed as an offering. My breath hitched in my throat.

There was no way.

The scratching of metal against ground was a constant companion sound to the beating of my heart. I shed all of my hunter tendencies as I stomped across the porch with an image of a perfect rectangle dug for me to dive six feet under, and my facial muscles tried to recreate a look of gratitude to give Haymitch as I laid myself to rest.

But then I stopped, half-dangling off the planks of the porch. My skinny arms hooked around the banister and I clung for a dear life I no longer knew. A life that was no longer precious to me.

I saw his mop of flaxen curls before anything else. They were slightly paler and a great deal shorter than I remembered, but that didn't matter because they still were as vibrant to me as the sun of my yesterdays, and they sprung and coiled over his forehead with his shoveling. 

His head bent down in silent prayer to the soil at his feet, tilling it as if there was nothing else in the world that mattered in that moment. Thick muscles, not as thick as before, but still telling of young boy being nourished into a man, corded up his arms and disappeared into the sleeves of his thin cotton shirt. Beads of sweat reflected the sun hanging high in the sky at the corners of his temples, and there was a dusting of dirt along his face and neck. His skin was impossibly red; blooming up his neck and cheeks in patches like it always did when he was nervous or engaged in physical exertion. Two brown handprints dusted above the knees of his heather grey sweatpants; sweatpants that folded into worn leather hiking boots cutting off at midcalf. 

Of course, the gloves sat a few feet away, unused because he was always the soul that preferred getting his hands dirty directly. As innate to me as the function to breathe, I was hyper-aware of everything he did, everything he was, right in that moment. My nerves craved him, his touch, his likeness, and I found myself leaning towards him. He was a dream.

And then he turned, hearing my sharp intake of breath, and my reality shattered.

Twin moons of cornflower blue eclipsed my vision, his pupils dilating and constricting as his mind worked to recognize me. He looked puzzled, yet his face was unblemished. There were no scritched borderlines where old skin mapped out space to collide with new skin; no patches of pink and white and gray like those that riddled my face and body. He was new, a perfect cherub of prepubescent manhood. Not the discarded byproduct of war that I was.

“You're back,” I breathed, although the sound that came out was like I was crushing two pieces of bark together.

He blinked, and then his eyes slid to the wheelbarrow a few paces away. His body shifted on his knees, a slight enough movement to stand inconspicuously in front of it. Shielding it from me, I realized.

“Can I help you, miss?” He said, his voice curious, yet laced with a strange uncertainty. He sounded sincere out of sheer politeness, and nothing more. His eyes were clouded over with the polite defensiveness he usually reserved for Victory Tours and Capital parties. 

“Peeta,” I whispered, more to myself than to him.

He frowned, and stuck the garden shovel into the overturned soil. He was offended that my name fell from his lips. His muscles were tense. His body was dangling on the fine line between fight and flight, and he regarded me like one alone in the woods weaponless would a rabid animal.

That rabid animal was me.

“Are you looking for something around here, ma’am?” Again, with the honest sincerity that would have crippled my heart if it hadn’t already stopped beating long ago. 

I just stood there, breathing very slow, nearly dead. He blinked, unsure of how to react to my unresponsiveness.

I wasn't sure what floored me more—his complete inability to recognize me, or what I might have looked like to him—a starved polecat, half-strangled and drug through a muddy alleyway, only to be left in a bag for two weeks with no nourishment save the puddle it slowly drowned in.

I cleared my throat, stood a little straighter. The yellow petals peeking from the edge of the wheelbarrow winked at me in the sunlight.

“What're those?” I forced out with a cough. 

He wiped his hands on his pants and stood up. He drew an arm across his brow and stared at me. His expression was calculating, his gaze flicking from me, to the partially-toiled ground, and the wheelbarrow, and then back to me.

“They're for her,” he said, quieter this time, and stared at the ground. I hadn't been around people enough lately to read his expression.

“For who?” I grunted.

“For the little girl who saved my life in the Games,” he said. “She died so I could live. Her name was Primrose, and I thought she'd like these,” he said. Her name from his lips was so eloquent, and there wasn't the slightest hint of embarrassed discretion everyone else had when saying her name in front of me. As if he didn't know what she was to me? How it crushed my soul into smithereens each day I survived in this spectral house without her. Without him.

He gestured to the wheelbarrow with a flick of his wrist. His voice still had its lilting quality, well-spoken with the Townie accent barely present. But a new rich baritone sound sparked a hunger for life in me I couldn't explain. How long had it been since I've heard his voice?

That spark was snuffed by his next words.

“Who are you?” He said. He blinked, once, twice, and his long blonde lashes stuck to themselves. Inwardly, I found myself longing for them to kiss the curve of my shoulder. To him, I just crouched there, speechless. My body was jittery, and I was scrunched between two skinny frog legs like a wild repulsive thing with long stringy hair matting into dreadlocks, and capillaried eyes deep in sockets that stretched over a drawn face. I hung on to his next words; his voice was my lifeline.

“If you're a squatter, it's time you got out of here. Let’s respect the memory of the family who lived here. There are plenty of other houses in the District to set up camp. Better yet, a soup kitchen is opening up in the next couple of days with the Ceremony, I'm sure you could find help there.” He gripped the larger shovel in both hands, leaving the head stuck in the ground, but making a big enough gesture for me to know he meant business.

I patted at the matted mess that was my hair over and over again in the same spot, and swiveled my neck around, wildly trying to grasp at any one thing that I could to make sense of what was happening to me. I blinked rapidly, to stave off the tears, or because I had suddenly become blind and couldn't see anything for the roaring in my head, I didn't know. I was a horse spooked by a snake, and I reared back from the porch beam. 

He gave me a tentative smile. “Go on now, let's go upstairs and collect your things, I'll walk you into town. I won't tell anyone you've been in Victor's Village, Miss... I didn't catch your name,” he said, his words the warmest they had been up to this point. If it wasn’t so emotionally crippling for me, I would have remembered that I loved the sound of his smile. 

He could sense my unraveling as an insane homeless creature on the brink of death, and of course, it was only in his innately pure character to want to help me. He dropped the shovel, and crept toward me, slow and deliberate with his knees bent, arms outstretched, almost for a hug. He looked like he was creeping up to catch a lizard. He wanted to capture me and put me in a cage like the rest of them. 

My vision was blurred, and my body reeled, but my hunter feet, slaves of security in routine, knew where to go. I scrambled across the porch, tripping over the uneven boards and flung myself inside. I slammed the door and locked it. The sound of the metal sliding into place calmed my nerves a smidgeon. I could vaguely hear him yelling something and pounding on the door, but I moved like a tornado up the stairs and into all the rooms, ripping them apart, slamming open windows, doing anything I could to remind me that this hellish reality was my punishment. 

Out the window went that infernal vase, the face of its single perfect white rose (still, after all this time) leering up at me, the last relic of Snow’s pale and sheltered countenance, as it fell to the ground outside with a crash. A fit of ragged breaths ripped through me, and no amount of oxygen sucked into my lungs made it feel any less like drowning in sand.

I vaguely heard Haymitch bark Peeta’s name somewhere outside, but that world was far below me now.

I gripped the walls, sliding my palms along the peeling wallpaper and cracked paint. The house was experiencing my same descent into decay and madness. I fumbled around like a drunken stoat in and out of rooms and closets, searching for the soft supple leather of my father's hunting jacket and my bow. I cradled these sacred treasures to my chest, and stuffed myself into damp darkness of a locked closet. I closed myself in, making sure all three walls stood at my back and against the bones of my arms, and met oblivion.


	2. Phoenix

I died that day in the closet, I’m sure of it. I felt something strip away, some deep, integral part just break off from me and melt into the floorboards. I hadn’t possessed the consciousness long enough to discern if it was something important to me or not. My mind simply ceased to exist. I didn’t even possess enough of a grip on the world to suffer from nightmares. 

But my body persevered against my will, and I awake to a gentle nudging and familiar far-off whisper three days later.

“Get up, Katkin. We've got woods for stompin’, not snoozin’, and ya kent stay here all day,” it whispered. Those were the same words my father said to me out at the lake during a lazy summer afternoon when we had grown fat off of mouthfuls of berries, sunflower seeds and long drags of goat milk, three months before he died. Words that have been a quiet mantra in dire straits ringing in my head ever since. They've never failed me before. Only figures they wouldn't fail me now.

I feel another nudge, like the soft shove of a mother wren to her hatchlings right before it's time to leave the nest, or one quick lick of a mountain lion to her cub after stumbling over a crop of mangled forest roots; perhaps more like the quivering wet nose of a doe on the rump of her fawn to help guide her through the meadow.

I blink, and stretch my arms, my father's jacket pooling in between my legs. My joints creak, and I am welcomed by the soft crack of light underneath the door. It's some point in the day—judging by the buttered light, it is most likely early. I rise and grip the doorknob with movements strangely fluid and capable after being cramped in the fetal position for a few days. Unlocking it, I pull it open, and it gives a creaky protest, catching on a floorboard before finally giving way. The pale, clean light of morning bursts in my face, and I reel back from the sensual overload. I peel my clothes away from my body until I stand, naked and numb in the middle of my room. 

A certain clarity, an acceptance of my will to survive, thinly veiled by a jaded indifference to everything around me, helps me finally find a semblance of inner peace. It isn't really peace by any means, but it's something more than the gaping maw of sadness and despair I became so accustomed to.  
I arise from my pitiful ashes scattered around the bottom of that closet with the will to at least exist. I woke up alone, as I would die alone, and there isn't a clearer, more gratifying truth than that. While different, whatever this thing is that I feel isn’t life. It’s acceptance. The bottom line. A willingness to go through the routines of living, but nothing else. 

I stumble into my bathroom, turn on the shower as hot as it will go, and let the steam envelop me. My nipples pebble, and gooseflesh ripples up my arms and down my torso to my toes. I don't allow myself to look in the mirror naked lest I lose my nerve and crawl back into a hole again. I slide into the glass box, and close myself inside. The hot water pelts me, washing away the stale sweat and immeasurable grief clinging to my skin. I don't move, save to hug myself, and the water dribbles in between my breasts and into a triangular pool between my forearms and stomach. I grab a loofa hanging down from the showerhead and scrub my body until the skin bleeds. Pumping a few squirts of shampoo into my palm, I sud up my hair and rip out the knots. I watch the debris, dirt, matted sworls of hair circle the drain with a strange sort of liberating satisfaction. 

I stay in the shower long after the water runs freezing cold and everything loses feeling. Wrapping myself up in a towel, I stalk over to the dresser and force myself to sit in front of it. As I run the comb through my hair, fat tears squeeze out of the corners of my eyes. I was never one for my appearance, but the brittle skeleton staring at me from the mirror with my father’s hollowed eyes and dark skin and mother’s high cheekbones and pointed nose bring a fresh wave of terror over me. I stare ahead to a point on the wall, and my fingers weave a thick plait into the side of my head. It wasn’t the showmanship of the hairstyle I had during the games, but a tighter, more practical approach that I fasten under my ear with several bobbypins.

I lather up the seams of my scars with cream sent from the newly-formed Capitol, then slide into what-was-once a tight pair of khakis, now loosely clinging to my hipbones, and a modest hunter-green top before shimmying into my father’s hunting jacket and grabbing my bow from the closet. Sleek and silent, my feet find the soundless sections of each stair with ease of muscle memory, and I go into the kitchen to make breakfast. As always, signs of Sae are present: all manner of fruits and vegetables in bowls piled around the counters, refrigerator freshly stocked with cheeses and other perishables sent over on the train from District Five, and the smell of vinegar and lavender lingering in spaces that she frequented. 

Another basket sits neatly in the middle of the table, a pale blue cloth peeking out and a note with Sae’s uneven chicken-scrawl sitting folded in front of it. It promises bread and bad memories, a scene I wholly avoid as I stuff a set of hunting knives into my game bag. I slide two in between my sock and boot. Perched on the bay window that overlooks the backyard, I shovel saggy eggs melted in haste with bits of cheddar into my mouth and down a glass of orange juice. I force my boots onto my feet, stuffing the cuffs of my pants haphazardly inside, lace them up, and step outside.

The sky is clear and peach-colored and the air is crisp with the sweet organic stench of leaves shedding from the trees. Light peeks out from the woods in splotches against the scenery; the morning is still relatively young. The Indian summer still lingers during this time of year, but is reaching the cusp of overstaying its welcome. I clutch my bow to my chest, and take a moment to revel.

“There’s my girl!” Haymitch caws from his chair on the porch. He’s up unusually early. My face darkens, and I whirl around to head off toward the woods through my backyard. 

“Wait, sweetheart! Where you goin’? Don’tcha wanna hear about your boy?” I stop. Of course, I stop, and he knew I would.

As I slither to the furthest point on the porch away from him, facing outward into the center of Victor’s Village with my game bag clutched in my lap, he chuckles. I hear the tinkle of liquid sloshing in his bottle as he takes a long pull from it. I lay down my bow carefully, directly in his sight, my fingers dancing along the string. My aura exudes glass daggers in his direction.

“What do you want, Haymitch,” I sigh.

“What are you talking about what do I want? You disappear in that depressing hellhole of yours for days on end and then come out looking as fresh-faced as Death himself, ready to go traipsin’ off into the world, and that’s the tone you decide to use when all I care about is your wellbeing?”

I turn my head slowly around to level him with a scowl. He chuckles again and scratches the fat of his stomach. I continue to stare at him. Pulling himself to the edge of the seat, his look softens a bit.

“Listen, sweetheart, I’m just worried aboutcha, is all,” he says. I pluck at an Irish pennant in my pants and refuse to look at him. He clears his throat, digs around in his pocket for a chew packet and stuffs one in between his left cheek and teeth as natural as the day he was born. Since appearances are no longer kept up for mentoring the Games year after year, it seems he’s taken up another bad habit. Either that, or he hid it so well all these years.

“I suppose you have questions about the boy,” he said with a small bit of phlegm stuck in his throat. I am ever thankful that Haymitch is on my same page, straight to the point.

“Am I in a dream or does Peeta Mellark not know who I am?” I say. My voice is strong and clear, not at all the way I feel. Haymitch knows it’s an act, but he keeps up this weird mutual understanding of my pride without batting an eye.

“’Fraid so, sweetheart. The Capitol couldn’t figure out what to do with him since his brain couldn’t figure out what to do with you, so the Good Doc hooked him up with an ‘experimental invasive procedure’ to essentially erase you from his memory entirely.”

“So I don’t exist at all, according to his brain?”

“I’d say not.”

“Well that’s convenient,” I say. “Kinda curious why they didn’t do that in the first place.”

“Mind you, this Capitol is just trying to help,” Haymitch says. The irony in his voice is not lost on me.

“How would he not just learn about me and the procedure from everyone else in the District?”

“Well, we’ve all been… instructed to keep you a bit hush-hush when talkin’ to him, for the better of his health and all that shit. Seems to be working pretty well, since you’ve all but disappeared for a year and a half. Your name doesn’t pop up that much anymore. Besides, yesterday was his first day back to Twelve.”

“Does he suffer from the hijacking?” I ask. It’s almost a whisper.

“Not that I’ve noticed. Doc says he’s doin’ just fine.”

“Do you know what he does remember?”

“Welll… they made some tweaks here and there. Prim,” he pauses to take a swig of liquor and allow me to regain my composure from hearing her name, “is intact, as well as the memory of your mother. They obviously couldn’t erase the entire war, but they switched things around a bit so that her death coincided with his victory in the Games. That sparked a rebellion, in which he became a prisoner of war, and a ragtag band of rebels, including your Mr. Hawthorne and myself, among others, rescued him and brought down the Capitol in a slightly skewed replica of what actually happened. Snow died of ‘natural’ rebel causes, as did Coin.”

“How do you even do that? Fake memories,” I snarled. My knuckles were white as I gripped the end of the porch.

“I’m supposin’ in a less painful and fear-inducing way that Snow did, considering he's not running around flippin' his lips with a finger and threatening to kill everyone,” he says. “For better or worse, it seems pretty permanent, especially with the way your introduction went down the other day. Didn't even know your name, eh?” Grabbing an empty bottle, he brings it to his lips and spits a long string of chew into it. 

I scoff and stand up.

“Now don’t go runnin’ off just yet. What happened over there? I got an idea from the boy. He was pretty shooken up that a poor skinny girl was starvin’ to death in the house of a famous dead family. I insisted he not worry his newly-pretty little head about it ‘cause wild animals tend to take care of themselves.” He gave me a sideways look. “Of course, he still left you a few loaves of bread for Sae to bring in for the mornings.”

“Since when have you wanted to talk so much?” I leap off the porch, strapping my bow and bag around my shoulder and whirl around to face him with fire in my eyes.

“Well, sweetheart, that would be since this was the first time I actually got worried you were gonna die,” he said, followed by another spit into the bottle. “There’s more than just that boy that cares about you.”

“Yeah, well, I don't think that's the case with him anymore,” I said, sweeping my arm toward my house in reference to my botched encounter with Peeta. I noticed rows and rows of neatly-planted primroses smiling back at me as they marched along the front of the house and around the corner. I turned away from them as if they were going to set me on fire.

“I’m not much of a bettin’ man, but once he gets to know you, for better or worse, he’ll fall in love all over again. Lovin’ your prickly ass is in his DNA.” Again with the sarcasm. I don’t know when Haymitch became such a fan of mine and Peeta’s love life, but it makes me uncomfortable, even more so now that the ‘starcrossed lovers’ don’t know how to love each other anymore. Perhaps we never really knew. That is typically the case with those doomed to be “star-crossed.”

“’Course… you could save yourselves both the trouble and just stay away from him too,” he shrugs.

“That’s the only thing I can do,” I murmur to myself. That was the least I could do for the boy with the bread, after all this time. Here he was with a fresh start, unburdened by painful memories of our tumultuous romance (if you could call it that) and the shadows of so many that died with or because of me. Regardless of how I felt, or the loneliness I carried because of his absence, I couldn’t allow myself to mess that up for him. 

I want to cry, but the tears won’t come. 

“I’m leaving so try not to oversaturate yourself while I’m gone.” I make a beeline for the path laid out to town. The woods sprawl out in the distance, the trees seemingly shifting to my oncoming presence in a welcoming gesture.

“Land me a big one, sweetheart,” he calls.

I decide, against my better judgment, to be swept away with the spontaneity of curious instinct and continue along the path into town. I had left Victor’s Village all of two times: once, to receive the small box of ashes that were presumably my sister’s, mixed in with soot, and crumbled stone, and the ashes of other children (this alone sent me into a fresh wave of unending nightmares for a month straight), and the only other previous attempt to walk in the woods (which resulted in me climbing up a tree, falling asleep, and waking up to a flashback of the first Games). 

In those days, I didn’t possess the strange resolve to exist that I do now. It makes me giddy; I feel invincible. That should be the first clue to retreat and regroup with a better-thought-out strategy to how I am to spend my time. But I’ll take it—it’s a fresh change from spending my days wishing I could die.

It has been about a year and a half since coming back to Twelve, and a lot of the town has largely been rebuilt. Buildings in various states of construction line the main street on to where the Seam used to squat, four of which are in full operation. Several plots are lined out with brick borders for more. 

The Town is bustling, surprisingly, and I sorely wish for a hood as I pass by the open-faced stores where throngs of people who had the guts to return along with me start to stare and whisper. Many of them I don’t recognize, although it is a swarming sea of blonde-haired blue-eyed Townies (most of whom are much scrawnier and more humbled-looking than before the war). Some market patrons have the fair, sun-kissed skin and rich oily hair of District Four, others still have the solemn faces and broad hulking muscles from the hard labor of District Seven and District Ten.

I feel weird being around people after having kept such a great distance from them after the war. No one bothers coming up to Victor’s Village. There are only whispers of death and self-medicating ghosts there. Although it perturbs me, I can hardly be surprised at the glances I’m given—as if I still wear dirt on my shoulder from climbing out of the grave.

It takes me a good while to pick through the outskirts of Town, sticking to the shadows when I can, my nostrils flaring with the smell of cooking meat, sweat, and autumn leaves. While the war stripped me of too much to sanely recollect, I’m pleased that my keen senses remain. The hunter’s blood of my father and grandmother still sings through my veins. 

People flock to and fro, moving things, and yelling across the street. Their jittery energy crackles in the air around me, and I subconsciously feed from it. Colored streams of paper, hanging lanterns on sticks, bushels of hay, and barrels of whiskey are toted and rolled along the streets, heading toward the central point of Town. I find myself unable to follow them there. A strange heaviness, like an invisible boundary, or perhaps a mental defense mechanism keeps me a safe distance away from the part of town where the bakery used to be. 

A few dark-skinned Eleven souls prick my attention from the crowd, huddling meek and close together over a basket of goods. I catch the eye of one of them, who gives a single solemn nod in my direction before returning to a price discussion with her other family members. The crowd starts to press in on me as the word “mockingjay” flutters about more frequent than I care to acknowledge. I plaster on a scowl and continue past the stores in Town, dipping out to a side path that leads to the Hob. 

My heart wrenches against my sternum and warmth spreads in my abdomen. Of course the Hob remains. It was the first thing to be rebuilt, growing up like an ornery weed against the will of any Capitol, this one or the next. There is still rubble strewn about, although nature is starting to reclaim it. Kudzu sprawls across the crumbled rocks, broken lumber, and ash as long spindly fingers reaching out from the neighboring foliage.

In the Hob is where I find my olive-skinned, grey-eyed, curly black-haired Seam brethren. There are almost as many people in here as there is in Town. Despite the Old Capitol being overthrown and the Town having opened its arms to welcome people from all walks of life, we are creatures of comfort and habit, and flock back to old stomping grounds. Few look up to see me as I enter, and those who do give me a silent nod of recognition. I am not a spectacle here, just another Seam sister here to do my business and get out.  
It’s nice to be able to walk around with my bow and bag strapped across my back. 

I meander slowly through the different stalls. The air is different in the Hob, less gloomy and unforgiving. The mines were obviously shut down with the war as they posed a tremendous hazard from the bombs having rustled up the earth in Twelve. Haymitch, on one of his news-bearing visits, mentioned talk of the Capitol working on installing hydro grids to each of the Districts for electricity. I tuned him out when he mentioned something about BeeTee and Gale being co-heads for the project. As of now, we turn to rationing the coal reserves stocked up at a compound at the edge of town for our fuel needs. Who knows how long that is to last.

Each of the shopkeepers is busy whittling away at sewing things, or preparing food, or stacking items on tables. There aren’t too many, but every stall boasts a significant assortment of wares coming from the Capitol allotments sent via train every two weeks—bits of cloth, richly-colored yarn, ingots of raw metal, tools of all shapes and sizes, bags of grain and flour and seeds for gardening. Or what people could scrounge up from the aftermath. I shy away from the older burnt-looking items as the memories and sadness threaten to creep into my psyche again. 

“Katniss!” I hear a voice that sounds like crunching paper and sifting soot call out from across the way. “Katniss, chil’!” I weave in and out of folk and find myself faced with Greasy Sae behind a giant black cauldron sitting atop a weeping wooden table. It looks like she scraped together some old lumber and pieced it together on top of some rocks. A few rickety stools sat under her makeshift bar, alongside some giant boulders situated as seats. Resourceful as always. 

“Hey, Sae,” I say, meek and quiet so as not to attract attention to myself. Sidled up to the bar are some workers, most likely helping to build back the town, yet instead of taking an early lunch in town, they take the long way to the Hob for some of her stew. They sit with their backs to me, hunched over a beaten metal bowl of stew and a mug of white liquor with their dusty hard hats casually strewn at their feet and against the bar. I slide into a stool, and she places a steaming bowl in front of me. The soup inside is brown, with a thick consistency, and rich Capitol-sent vegetables and plump starchy potatoes bobbing along the surface. I spy one or two small slivers of dark beef partially-submerged. Strong hints of rosemary and pepper waft up along with the steam.

“Could use some of your meat, chil’,” Sae says, giving me the side eye as she ladles up a heaping portion and slides it along the bar to a newcomer. A few men at the bar, all Seam, grunt in agreement, no doubt remembering the sweet gamey taste of venison and basil in Sae’s stew, all those ages ago.

“I’m working on it,” I mumble, and slurp the last bit of stew from the bowl. Some tucked away part of me resurfaces, wishing for a corner of bread to slop up the remaining juices. I reel backward with a groan and shove the bowl in Sae’s direction. My heart beats fast in my ears. I never want to think of bread again.

She hums in affirmation, although to what, I don’t know. Greasy Sae’s a very perceptive woman, and she has been on Earth longer than most in this District (or likely all of Panem). Whatever she sees, she doesn’t say.

“The Hawthorne boy’s back,” she says instead. I think she’s trying to give me a heart attack. My gaze cuts to her, as sharp and swift as one of my arrows, and her crow’s feet wrinkle as she grips my hand. Her palms are warm and maternal, and eclipse my fingers. “He wants you to teach him how to hunt. Says he’s plenty old ’nough now,” she says.

Ah, Rory. I sigh. “Where is he living now?” I ask tentatively.

“The Capitol’s built up a house for the Hawthornes round the east side a’ town, northern part of your woods,” she says, and lets go with a final squeeze. “Our boy’s a hero up in the city and has a buncha folks pullin’ strings for ‘im and his family. Their mama’s not to keen on city livin,’ and misses the trees and soot. Brought herself and ‘er brood about three days ago, I reckon.”

So no Gale. Figures. Maybe he’s worried I’d notch and arrow and aim it for his brain before the train was able to dock at the station. I’m worried this is probably true.  
“I’ll head over on my way back in,” I say. 

“Good idea, honey,” she says in a knowing manner. “Although he’s takin’ the little ‘un to the festival in Town tonight once he’s done settin’ up. You ought to meet ‘em there,” she adds. 

“Festival?” I ask.

A man a few seats down from me pipes up. “Suppose ta be a celebration from the Capitol about the District comin’ together and rebuildin’. Last brick laid on the Town Council building a few days ago, so they sent in a buncha food an’ spirits an’ decorations an’ the like. A few a tha boys’ll be playin’ music and there’s already a dancin’ square set up in tha middle a Town.”

“They’re tryin’ to call it the Autumn Equinox to mark the end of tha harvest an’ summer an’ crap,” a younger fellow at the end says.

That explains the hustle and bustle I saw.

“Either way, it’ll be free food n’ drink, an’ a way for everyone ta get out of the house,” Sae says. Her grey eyes meet mine as I slide away from the booth. I give a nod to her and the boys sitting around her stall.

"Seeya ‘round, Katniss,” a few of them murmur before returning to their soup.

Once I reach the outskirts of town to the east of the Hob, I am met with vines and large outcroppings of weeds peeking over the chainlink fence. I take a deep breath, all grass and autumn still swirling with a twinge of summer, and take off running. I pump my legs as fast as they will go, leaping over large cuts of rock, precarious plantlife, and fallen logs, and manage to dart into the opening in the fence. My chest tightens as a sticky nostalgia crashes over me, the memories threatening to leave me drained. Somehow, I can still smell Gale here, his woodsy musk mixed with the lye soap Hazelle used to wash their clothes with. My lungs burn, but I urge my legs to move faster until I all but tumble down the hill to where the meadow lays. 

I fling my bag and bow and sprawl out on the ground, and there are bugs crawling, and dandelion seeds sent flying, and the long stalks of grass crumpling underneath me poking into my back, but I don’t care. I fill my lungs with as much oxygen as possible, pulling in the mountain air and counting so slow with the exhale that my head swims. Somewhere in my mind is the fact that there are people buried under this dirt, but I push that thought away. Everything around me is so fresh and alive and present, and I find it difficult to believe that I had been so willing to curl into the darkness only days before.

Oh, to only wake up on good days.

I lie there, watching the sun crawl across the sky and think about nothing. I take my sweet time to head into the woods and send a few arrows flying into the trees to test myself. At the beginning, most of them miss their mark and skitter off into the leaves, but after shaking off a bit of rust, I’m able to hit my mark a good percentage of the time. Certainly not the stats of my glory days, but for only an hour’s worth of practice, I am satisfied with the results.  
A fat rabbit hops along, rustling up some leaves and taunting me. I notch an arrow, and aim at the spot between its flank and front leg, so quiet and still I can feel a bead of sweat dribble down my face and hear it splotch onto a dry leaf. I sit there only to watch the hare, lazy and indifferent to my presence entirely, hop away from me into the nearby brush. 

My muscles are stiff and the ache is sweet. A greenish-blue bruise blooms on my left forearm as a result of the waning of my skills, and I won’t be hunting for a few weeks until I regain my strength, but I feel alive. I arrive at Gale’s meeting spot, our rock, and circle around to check the patches we used to frequent for mushrooms. I gingerly pluck a couple of caps and toss them in my bag, along with the various greens I find along the way. My palm lingers on the rock, which has remained cool to the touch as it sits below the full canopy of the forest. I push all thoughts aside and focus only on my exhaustion as I make my way back to Town. 

It is midevening when I scootch in between the fence to the other side. The illumination from town grows as the sun drips down past the horizon and casts a warm milky glow in front of me.

I know I shouldn’t. There is no reason for me to partake in this festival as it only serves as a celebration of my sister’s death and all those who sacrificed their lives in war, but I find my feet taking the path into the middle of Town anyway. The urge to see the Hawthornes must be stronger than my self-preservation, and I am too tired to argue semantics with myself.

I slink in between two newly-formed buildings and am swallowed up by the throng of people in the middle of Town. Town buildings encircle a large square bordering a fountain. There is a large statue of a mockingjay bursting into flight among several squirts of water, and a stone plaque sitting at its base, which I refuse to read. The Town Council building (to me it will always be the Justice Building) sits as a backdrop shadow to the fountain and the scene going on around me. 

I am blown away. Never would I have imagined that there would be this many people in District Twelve all at once, let alone in the middle of Town Square, and I stand in shock for a few moments. There are wooden stalls set up like a miniature marketplace, boasting games, and woven straw goods, and sweets, and face paints, and floating candles. Children dart from every which way, clacking sticks together and weaving flowers and feathers in each other’s hair, and people of all shapes and colors stand in large circles over plates of food and sizeable drinks. Music tinkers from somewhere across the square amidst the laughter and amicable banter of festivalgoers. 

Night is falling, and the party has only just begun.

A fire pit sits off a ways, and a giant full-sized sow slow-roasts on a spit over the fire’s open face. The smell of old-world barbeque and fried food plumes forth from a tent. I make my way inside and weave through the crowd to the edge of a long buffet-style table. I stand there and watch as people flock around it, exiting the tent with heaping plates of sweet-smoked pork falling off the bone, fluffed mashed potatoes stuffed with garlic and goat cheese, fat drumsticks bursting forth with dark turkey meat, plump piles of butterbeans and stalks of oiled asparagus. I see fried corn hoecakes, steaming bowls of butternut squash soup, and candied yams, whole quarters of pumpkin or mince pie with whipped buttercream and honeyed drizzle, generous cuts of filleted fish straight off the train from Four, several-bean salads, sticks of peppermint bark, casseroles of all types only to be washed down with mugs of ale, or white liquor, iced tea or hot white chocolate or anything I could possibly imagine. I haven’t seen a spread like this since the train ride during the first Games. And even then, it may have not been this large. 

Most people have a few slices of different types of bread stacked on their plates, bursting forth with nuts and herbs and cheese and all mixtures of heady yeasty goodness. I cannot see where the buffet ends or begins for all the people, but I’m not about to explore it too extensively. I’m afraid of what (or who) I might find there.  
Several people recognize me, mostly Townsfolk or those from other districts (the Seam folk as I noticed earlier tend to respect my space a little more), and squeeze my shoulder or grasp my hands to whisper words of thanks or well wishing, and it makes me dizzy. My name buzzes around me and catches like wildfire, spreading quickly out into the crowd and beyond my reach. 

Nighttime has settled and the moon hangs fat and low in the sky. I hurriedly ladle something into a mug and steal away to circle of seats away from the food tent to regain my bearings. I grip my game bag close to me, taking a sip, and consider leaving. Hot chocolate foam sits on my upper lip and I lick it clean. 

“KA’NISSS!” Someone squeals, and a tiny body slams into my lap. I pull my mug away as quick as possible to avoid the inevitable spill and set it on a table next to me. Posy wraps her skinny arms around and snuggles her face into my stomach. I swivel her around on my lap to get a good look at her, all twiggy limbs, large doe eyes, and long brown hair done up in two braids, and crush her to me. 

“Poseybear!” I cry, finally remembering I had a voice to speak with. “When’d you get here?”

“Me ‘n’ Mama jus’ got to tha festival, Rory’s been here alllllll day, ’n’ Rory ‘n’ Mama were gettin’ some food, and we heard people talkin’ about you, ‘n’ I ran away to find you ‘n a’course I found you first!” She peeps. “Mama! Rore!” She calls, looking back into the tent. “They’re comin’,” she says, all satisfied as she gives me a toothy grin.

“How old are you now, little Bear?” I ask, gripping one of her braids and tickling her chin with the end. She giggles and pushes my hands away. She looks like a miniature Hazelle down to the short block nose, but she’s got those striking Seam eyes I know so well, a bluish slate grey. A color rivaled only by those that sit in her eldest brother’s face. I brush a clump of jagged bangs from her eyes.

“I’m nine, a’course,” she says.

“And a heap of trouble, too,” a woman’s voice says warmly behind me. Posy leaps off of me and I jerk to my feet. I whip around, coming face to face with the second eldest Hawthorne boy. Hazelle stands off to the side, a grin wrinkling her face.

“Oh God,” I breathe, and Rory pulls me into a pair of long lanky arms. Hazelle closes the gap between us shortly after, gripping us both in a mother bear hug as Posy squeezes in and hugs our legs. We hold each other for a few moments, and I breathe them in, the flesh of my second family. My face is pressed against Rory’s chest, and he smells of pine in a way that all the Hawthornes do. I only then realize how much it is that I miss this family. 

“Hey, baby,” Hazelle mumbles into my hair. “You takin’ care of yourself?” All I can do is nod.

“You’re so tall now,” I whisper with my head tilted upward to get a good look at Rory. A clear image of him and Prim tumbling around in the dirt between our Seam houses as Gale and I take off to the woods crosses my memory. Rory seems to see it in his own mind, and he squeezes my hand and flashes me a smile, one that’s small and shy. He never was one for words but more of a boy of careful consideration and deliberate action. And although he wore the same olived skin, narrow nose, and dark curls, he held none of the explosive fire of his older brother. 

“All tha Seam boys grow fast once they’ve hit fifteen,” Hazelle says, and ushers us all to sit down at the table with one sweep of a mother duck’s wing. She sets another mug in front of me, and my nose is instantly met with notes of chocolate mingled with mint. “Although at this rate, Rore’s gonna be the tallest of ‘em all.”

“Mama, am IIIiiii gonna grow like a Seam boy?” Posy chirps from behind her plate. Hazelle lifts a steaming fork of sweet potatoes to her lips.

“Not if I keep haventa help you remember how to eat,” Hazelle chids.

“But Mamaaaaaaaaaa, I don’t like these!” Posy frowns and turns away. 

“It’s that or sprouts, and you like those less,” Hazelle warns. Posy immediately grips the fork and stuffs the bite into her mouth. She chews with no small amount of indignation, pointedly looking everywhere but her mother.

“Where’s Vick?” I suddenly realize.

“Ma made ‘im stay back at the house until he shaved the ash fuzz from his upper lip,” Rory says with a grin.

“No son of mine’s gonna step foot off that porch without a clean-shaven face,” she explains gruffly. “An’ if he’s too stubborn to look respectable, he can stay at home with extra chores for all I care. Plenty a boxes to unpack from the move.”

I bring the mug to my lips, which I find are upturned in a smile. I am content to bask in the glow of people still alive that I love.

“Looks like you brought the meadow with you,” Rory says as he plucks a long stalk of grass from the back of my head. “You head out today?” He gently taps the bruise on my forearm.

I give him a quick nod.

“Didn’t hit anything, though,” I say. “Sae told me you were looking to hunt. It’s gonna be a while before I shake all the rust off.”

He shoots me a look of quiet understanding. “Sos long as you let me know the next time.” He shrugs and casts his gaze to the middle of the Square, where a centralized crowd is gathering. The band has relocated to a smattering around the fountain, and a section of the Square is blocked off. 

“Rore’s playin’ his fiddle tonight, Miss Ka’niss, isn’t that neat?!” Posy exclaims in between a mouthful of peas and pearled onions. 

“And it’s about damn time we have some decent music around here too.” Haymitch stumbles into view from the food tent. Who would have thought he was sober enough to know there was a festival.

Each of his hands curl around a mug of what I can only assume to be full of white liquor. He flings himself into a seat across the table from me, thrusts one of the mugs in the air as a mock toast at me and takes a long pull from it. “I’m tired of this honky Townie shit. All brass and no string. You better go out there and put ‘em all to shame, Middle Hawthorne.”

Rory says nothing, and it’s either the glow from the raging bonfire freshly tended or a blush spreads across his cheeks, I can’t rightly tell. He takes that as a cue, and as graceful as a stalking wildcat, he pulls himself from the chair and slinks off toward the procession. Sure enough, a fiddle-shaped case thunks against his back as he walks, getting lost in the crowd. 

“KATNISS EVERDEEN?” Something shrill sounds off to the left of me, and barely in the blink of an eye, Effie Trinket stands in front of me. She is markedly watered down from her Hunger Games days, having ditched the wigs and neon colors in favor of a more conservative palette, although much better put together than her time in district Thirteen. Her hair is still big and curly, a pale gold this time, and she’s settled for a comfier ensemble of white chiffon blouse and pencil skirt. Some golden bangles clink around her wrists, denoting her arrival. 

She is quivering and squealing, barely able to contain herself and as I begrudgingly oblige her by standing up, she explodes into a cramping embrace. I had reluctantly grown to love her too over the years, having seen how she cared for me in her own way, but already as stifling as this festival was, I know she would be the one to smother me.

“Katniss, Katniss, Katniss, darling! How are you?? Have you been getting my letters, or is the post running foul down here again? I have a few things of yours, but I was afraid to send them via train, the damn thing’s still pretty unreliable this far out, but I brought them with me, of course. I think you’ll really enjoy them. I came by your house and you weren’t there earlier, and Haymitch didn’t even have the mental capacity to tell me you were coming to the festival. Ugh, I can’t believe they left you in the hands of that filthy drunk, gracious knows he can barely keep himself sitting upright—” 

“As you can see, I’m right here and doin’ just fine sitting upright, your majesty, and now if you’re quite done with your caterwauling before sweetheart shits her pants—”

“Haymitch,” I warn. He holds his palms out to me, mouthing his half-hearted apology as Effie squeezes my hand (she’s about the 200th person to do that today) and takes a seat next to him. 

“Isn’t this great? Everyone came to District Twelve to help rebuild things here first because you were hit the hardest,” she says. “And also because it is home to the Mockingjay (she looks around and whispers as she says this), and the birthplace of freedom from the Old Capitol! I’m surprised they have built things up so quickly! It’s simply marvelous! Pretty soon we’ll have specials running about the rebuilding going on around in the districts, won’t that be great, darling?” 

I nod, and stare down into the half-consumed contents of my mug. The air around us sags as topics of conversation are steadily inching towards things (and inevitably people) I don’t want to or will not talk about. 

I groan, and find myself wondering why I left the quiet confines of my house in Victor’s Village when Hazelle pipes up again.

“I can’t imagine you’d go out there and sing for us, Katniss baby,” she says, her eyes bright and curious. 

“I don’t think newborn District Twelve is ready for the hauntingly sober notes of Acker Everdeen in the Hanging Tree, as portrayed by the ex-Mockingjay on the night of a festival celebrating jovial forgetfulness,” Haymitch says. Effie smacks him hard in the shoulder and whispers a stern talking-to furiously into his ear. He groans and tries to scoot away from her.

Just then, a squeal from Rory’s fiddle rings out and effectively silences the crowd. I am thankful for the distraction as the band of musicians belt out the beginnings of an Old World bluegrass song. The melody peals from a pair of violins out into the night, and Rory’s bow blazes a fire across the fiddle strings. It’s only about two minutes in before a couple breaks the shyness of the crowd and heads to the dancing square. Everyone else erupts into a following behind them. The night is renewed as long cotton skirts are thrown into the air from men twirling their partners around. I tuck a stray lock of hair behind my ear, the artificial Capitol ear the captures the enhanced overture of all the sounds around me, and wiggle in my chair with the intentions to leave.

“Vickoriah Hawthorne, we’re over here!” Hazelle shouts next to me, and her youngest son materializes into view, a pout plastered over his face. He doesn’t look to be a day over thirteen, and he’s sprouted up like a cattail, stringy and hunched over in apology to his mother. He presses a bandaid underneath his left nostril.

“Take me ‘n’ Miss Katniss dancing!” Posy yells in Vick’s ear and nearly knocks the glasses from his ears. He wrenches his head towards me and stares with eyes wide and mouth open, now having seen a ghost, and a blush creeps over his face. Hazelle knocks him upside of his head, and he dips his head down. 

“Evenin,’ Miss Katniss,” he says. He looks down at his shoes and wrings his hands together. 

“Hey, Vick,” I say. 

“VICK, DANCINNNnnn,” Posy whines, taking a hold of his hand and yanking him in the direction of the square and the bonfire. She grips my index and middle fingers in a tiny palm and tugs at me to leave my seat. 

I shake my head and gently pull my hand from hers. “I was just about to leave, Poseybear. I had a long day in the woods and I’m tired.”

“Naw, Sweetheart, it’ll do you good to jostle up your bones with Young Hawthorne, here. Go have a dance.” Haymitch smirks, and it looks wicked. I shoot him an angry scowl. He just looks at me from behind his white liquor, obnoxious and smug.

“Yeah, Miss Ka’niss, dance with ussss!” Posy tugs on the sleeve of my hunting jacket.

That protective part of me, the survival instinct that has kept me alive all these years, sings in my veins. It nudges me in the direction of Victor’s Village, reminding me of the safe sanctity of the death prison of my bedroom. I have had more action today than I’ve had in the past year, and I have rightly deserve my rest. I don’t want to use up all my mojo in one day because I’m not sure if I’ll ever get it back again.

But Posy looks up at me with those doe eyes, and Hazelle smiles at me with her gentle wrinkles, and I can’t say no either. I slip off my jacket and gingerly tuck it along the back of my chair. I sigh, crestfallen, and allow the little girl to pull me and her brother toward the bonfire and dancing crowd.

I watch as Effie stands up and twirls around Haymitch’s chair. “I wouldn’t mind a dance either, you old fart. Teach me how to square!” She says. She grabs him by the hand, and he lets loose a string of swears, but begrudgingly stands to his feet. Not even he can say “no” to her.

There are some times that I am reminded why I love Effie.

“Just one dance, Posy,” I yell over the crescendoing music and laughter. Vick looks like a cat being dragged by the tail to a bath.

Conveniently, the song changes to a tune I remember my father would hum as he twirled my mother around the house. An old-world pre-District song, something from their high school days, when things were happier, and they didn’t have anything to worry about but each other. A duet between the guitar and banjo squeals into the air as they establish the melody, and people surrounding the dance square clap their hands to the beat. 

Despite myself, the energy and music is catching, and I smile and twirl Posy and Vick around. We swirl and stomp with the crowd. A few of the boys in the band sing, and I catch Rory’s voice intermingled with the others. 

_“River’s strong you can’t swim inside it, we could string some lights up the hill beside it, tonight the moon’s so bright, you could drive with your headlights out, ‘cause a little bit of summer’s what the whole year’s all about.”_

We all swirl around, and people switch partners. Vick and Posy twirl away from me, and I find myself with an older Seam woman. She swings me around, all smiles and wrinkles and laughter, and mouths the words to me. I join in with the chorus, dusting off the gears in my brain to remember the words.

_“ You look fine, fine, fine, put your feet up next to mine, we can watch that water line get higher and higher; say, say, say, ain’t it been some kind of day, you and me catching on like a wildfire.”_

As I twirl, in my peripheral, I see the telltale mop of curls a few couples away from me and my veins run cold. All of a sudden it’s like I climbed a tree and the branch broke without any warning, sending me slamming into the ground and knocking the air out of my lungs.

Peeta bobs back and forth with his legs in place, never much of a dancer (or musically-inclined at all), bent over a pair of long slender legs partially-hidden by a side-cut cotton dress. I notice the hitch in his movements as he overcompensates slightly for the metal of his prosthetic kissing too close to the sensitive skin of his leg nub. My eyes travel up the legs to rest on his gentle hand at her hip, the other hidden, but the way his arm is bent tells me he cups her cheek with an equally as gentle hand. His face is obscured in their unruly blonde explosion of hair, mingling together as intimately as their bodies are. The crowd surges, pushing me and my partner closer to him. 

No. 

I want to scrabble away but find myself unable to move. 

_“Don’t get up just to get another, you can drink from mine, we can’t leave each other, we can dance with the dead, you can rest your head on my shoulder if you want to get older with me, ‘cause a little bit of summer makes a lot of history.”_

No. No.

I stumble over my feet, and am jostled from the Seam woman by a tumultuous sea of elbows and legs and twirling and laughter and singing and music and festival. There’s no way I can prevent myself from doing anything else: 

I careen right into Peeta and the girl in his arms.


	3. Flashbang

Peeta and the girl break off from their kiss as I'm flung to the ground. This all feels horribly staged, and my stomach drops. The people around us stop singing and dancing. Everyone is too shocked or curious to figure out what happened that nobody helps me up. They form a circle around us and watch, like this is a regularly scheduled broadcast. I guess some things will never change.

Peeta and the girl's eyes peer down at me, wide as coal mine caverns, their lips still red and swollen, and cheeks dusted over with a blush. It doesn't take long for her to recognize me, and she has the decency at least to look away. She nervously fingers a blonde curl behind her ear with a feminine hand, equal parts pleasantly lean and fleshy, and grips her elbows, trying to hold her embarrassment together.

It only takes him a fraction of a moment, but it seems like an eternity before he leans down and offers a steady hand to me. His gaze is unwavering.

"Oh God, I'm so sorry. Are you alright?" He says, all warm and open and unashamed that I saw him snogging his lovely blonde. The difference between her and me is a sharp slap to my face. He is so completely unaware of such a terrifying and intimate history that his hand suggests. I can see our tragic starline written in the lines of his bear claw of a palm.

There is a faint twinkle of recognition in his eyes, but it's not the one I'm looking for—he simply recognizes my sorry carcass from a few days ago. The roaring in my ears has returned full force, and he sounds like he's speaking to me from the far end of a train tunnel.

The music has stopped, and several people from the crowd grunt as someone shoves them aside. Rory calls out from the distance, and I think I hear Haymitch too.

"Sweetheart, sweetheart, where are you—" his voice is frantic, fearing the worst: that I probably dropped dead on the spot from poor nutrition or went full-on war-addled Schizophrenic rampage mode due to the crowd and nobody knew what to do with me. His paternal or mentor or whatever instincts have kicked in a little late in the game, and at any other time, I would be thankful about his concern over me, but the bitter taste in my mouth at what is happening discolors everything. Why I seem to forever be the center of attention in this damn broken skeleton of a country, I will never know.

Finally, that survival instinct kicks in, just at the nick of time, and I slap Peeta's outstretched hand away, hard. The sound is loud and deafening from where I sit on the ground, and it echoes off the wide gaping faces leering down at me of people who are all baffled at the finality of such a gesture. A couple of people gasp, no doubt worried I might revert back to my arena kill mode, or post-war crazy and tack someone to the wall with a couple of well-placed arrows like I did Coin. Fire replaces the ice in my veins, along with something else I can't determine, and I leap to my feet and force my way through the crowd.

"Katniss!" Effie calls from somewhere to my right. I am blind-sighted by the urge to escape as a jungle with sweltering heat and poison tear gas materializes around me, and I take off into the night.

White noise dominates my cranium, and my legs are tireless machines as I sprint through the town and pass the Hob, down along the path to Victor's Village and into my house. Scenery blurs together in swatches of blacks, blues, and greys. It is no longer a game of real or not real; the only thing I know to be real is the pain and terror clipping at my heels. I slam the door, chest heaving, and clutch at the wood. Something glass falls to the floor with the force of the door, and breaks in an explosion of noise. Along with it goes my sanity.

"Get it together, Everdeen," I whisper breathlessly. My voice is shaky and dissipates into the yawning pit of the house in slow motion. It is so silent, the pitch black, and my eyes haven't adjusted to the darkness. The air around me sits and waits. Stalking me.

I see shapes move along the kitchen floor, rose-serpent-mutts and broken bodies, shredded flesh of someone's neck, long reptilian jaws halfway embedded in it, pink gums gleaming with warm dripping oozing blood, and skulls with white petals blooming out of the eye sockets, and Peeta's soft petaled kisses and hushed explicatives whispered from his lips against my ear during those camera-less nights on the train when it was just the two of us, and the vessels bursting underneath his fingertips as his thumbs snake around my throat and press into my trachea the night we rescued him, and Gale's Seam eyes leering at me from the shadowed fireplace, and his bloodied meaty back peeling out in long strips off of his spine from his time tied up to the whipping post. The spear lodged in Rue's abdomen falls from where it leans against the wall next to the hall closet and rolls in my direction, leaving blood smattering along the floor in its wake, and Mitchell's screams explode up from the basement, and I swear I hear his life being peeled from each one of his cells, and there's a thunking sound like the slamming of a coffin falling down the stairs, and two skinny arms pull a torso half-eaten by fire along the hallway where a sliver of moon leaks from a window, the light, it shines in each strand, such pale lifeless blonde hair, and my name being hissed over and over like in the sewers and the acrid smell of burning flesh finds my nostrils and I can't take it. I have to get out of here, but there is nowhere to run. Nowhere to run.

There is a ringing in my ear, a dusting residue of a frag grenade.

I close my eyes and cover my ears and curl up on the floor and I scream. It's long and breathless and goes on until my voicebox shreds and I realize I'm completely alone. Before, I had Peeta, and now there's nobody, I mean the Hawthornes, they'll never really know what it's like, and God, where the hell is Gale, because he killed my little sister and then left me, and everyone is dead, and my mother, she's been dead for years really in that mine where my father's body still lays, and all those people in the arena and District Twelve with the fire bombs, and the only person who knows this pain doesn't know my name or that I exist anymore, and he's gone, he's gone so very far away from here, I am without you, why the hell out of all the good people am I still alive when all I want to do is die? I have to get out of here, I have to get out of here, there are so many ghosts, please, just take me far far away, give me wings, get me out of here.

"SWEETHEART," Haymitch roars in my ear, and shakes the hell out of my shoulder. "SWEETHEART WAKE THE HELL UP."

I say his name over and over again, the "P" puttering out of my lips wetly along with spittle and tears and hug myself tighter, and I can't see anything.

"Sweetheart, you gotta stop talking, you've been yelling in the fetal position since before I got here, listen to me," he says.

But I shove him away and back up against the wall because I want to feel something hard and reassuring against my back. I'm clenching my eyes shut so tightly that my eyelids burn. I point a shaky finger down the hallway without looking up. No more monsters, please.

"There aren't monsters anymore. They're gone—you did that. And by God, all of us are so thankful for it. Ain't any way we'll be able to repay you, Sweetheart; but that don't mean we won't try. You stay right here, girl, you hear me?"

"I can't see, Haymitch, I can't see anything."

"Well, pull your fists from your eyes, Sweetheart," he says with a strange patience.

"Is she alright?" A worried voice says from the porch. A voice that has the potential to send me into another attack any second.

There are a few clunks and Haymitch's voice sounds farther away.

"Ah, yeah, Boy, girl's okay, just had a bad panic attack. Got real messed up in the war, so she doesn't do well with lights and colors and people. I knew that and shoulda took her home a few hours ago. Nothin' ta worry yourself about."

"She's bleeding on her head, though, Haymitch, we have to help her," he insists.

"Hazelle'll patch her up and carry her to bed, not ta worry," Haymitch insists back. His words are slurred—he may be drunk, but there's nothing in all of Panem more stubborn than that man (especially when it comes to me, for reasons unknown), and I can imagine through squeezed eyelids the firm hand he has on Peeta's back as he leads him away.

I lied—the only other man more stubborn than Haymitch is, well… Peeta.

Uneven clunks head back toward my way, and I crouch further into myself. 

"What is she doing in here by herself? Where's her family? Doesn't anyone care about her? Fall's around, it gets cold at night, we can't just leave her here, Haymitch…" He trails off as our mentor pushes him further outside. His words were so kind and concerned and undoubtedly Peeta, I groan and rattle off a mantra to try and erase the "doesn't anyone care about her" from my mind.

Deep down in my chest somewhere, I know he doesn't mean to sound malicious because he simply doesn't know any differently, but it hurts like you wouldn't believe.

Some more thunks—not quite the hollow vibrations of falling coffins—and gasps for breath, this time, inside. Rory's voice and Hazelle's.

"She okay?" Rory says from above me.

"Yeah," Haymitch calls from outside. "Panic attack. Came up to her slamming her head into the floorboards and naming off all the people she thinks she killed. Great deal about, well… things that happened, and then some gibberish. I'm gonna call Doc after everything settles down." More clunks, coming closer to me. I scurry up as close to the wall as possible, not daring to take a single peep at my surroundings. If I can't see it, it's not happening.

"Come on, baby," Hazelle says as I'm scooped up by a pair of wiry arms and hoisted onto a broad shoulder smelling of pine. Rory. I cling to him like a tree. She pets my braid and dabs a cloth on my forehead. "You just need some sleep. Have a clean bed back at our place, all ready for ya. Tonight you'll sleep with Posy. You'll thank Vick for gettin' it ready by gettin' up tomorrow and helpin' 'im with the chores," she commands. She knows even as insane as I am, I'm still Seam, and I won't be coddled.

I go limp, my eyes still shut, and am carried outside. A breeze pulls over the tiny hairs and bare skin of my arms, sending goosepimples up them, and I wrench myself up with a gasp of breath like I had just been submerged in the ocean. Clarity returns.

My bow. My jacket. The only things left of my father.

"Where are they?" I cry.

"Vick got 'em," Rory says as he pats my back. He's carrying me down the path and away from Victor's Village. I steal a glance over his shoulder and see Haymitch ushering Peeta toward his house. The girl who was with him at the festival leans over the porch railing, her fair eyebrows knit together with worry, hair curling in soft tendrils with the breeze. Her dress floats against a backdrop of dark Evergreen trees like feathered lace on a river. Peeta casts a reassuring glance to her, and then locks eyes with me.

We stare at each other for what must be an eternity. Everything is so long and suspended in time when it comes to him. I groan, and hide my face in Rory's shoulder.


	4. Motions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank ya kindly for the reviews and reads! It's been a little bit, so here's chapta four. I didn't really proofread it 'cause I have to run off into the land of Adulting for a bit to prep for Thanksgiving, but.. if there are any mistakes, I shall fix lata! Peeta, you have great timing, by the way~~

During the next four months, as Autumn makes its slow descent toward the end of the year, I live at the Hawthorne’s house. I do not once return to Victor’s Village and not once do I miss the unending quiet and grey tracks of spectral dust I left behind in my aimless meandering along the halls. 

The Hawthorne family makes it their mission to keep me fed and occupied so much that I have no time to think about anything but tilling garden soil, dicing vegetables, washing the District’s laundry, and when there is a free couple of hours, teaching Rory how to hunt. Most nights I end up diving for the pillow and not resurfacing until the morning when Hazelle or Vick rustles me and the sheets awake again. 

Hazelle (or Vick, whom she steadily employs in her absence) keeps a watchful eye on me during the day to make sure I do not go off alone to get sad. Hazelle is perceptive enough to pick up on the cues of darkness creeping in from the sides of my eyes, and she fixes me with something to do with my hands. Pressing crisp creases into dress pants, steaming white blouses, sweeping, dusting, raking leaves, and putting together different color schemes of bouquets for her and Posy’s blossoming flower business on the side. I don’t have the eye for color patterns, and every so often I will see dabs of paint dripping from his paintbrush or swatches of bright cloth cloud my vision, but I learn to read the cues and find something else to do.

There’s always something else to do in a District rebuilding itself from the rubble of war.

I assume Hazelle’s seen her fair share of sadness from living with the hard knocks for all of her life. I don’t know if she feels indebted to me in some way for my role in the war, or if she owes it to Gale and my mother to look after me, but even despite my initial protests, she has not once left me alone long enough to wallow. 

In all honesty, I think it is just the Seam in her: we stop at nothing to take care of our own. 

Every other week Dr. Aurielus patches through to the house phone to check up on me, and each time I duck out to find something to do besides talk about feelings and memories and other painful things I have been avoiding since my exile. He knows the game, as do Haymitch, Hazelle, and everyone else; yet they also know I am best at it when it comes to survival. 

Talking to him about a life he will never understand is not an option. On no dimensional plane will he understand me and my life, and likewise. And so, our conversations are not forced into existence. Everyone figures that as long as I look like I’m making progress and am not hurting myself or anyone else, things are fine enough.

If Gale calls, I never hear about it. As far as I am concerned, he and the phone are not anything that exist in my reality.

The more exhausted I am at night, the less likely I am to have nightmares; however, when they hit, they come hard. No matter how far I run, I cannot escape their shadowy death clutch on my soul, and after I have screamed myself awake, I find there is no solace. Some nights Posy gets up from her bed on the other side of the room and pats my head like she would a tiny kitten (she has the patience of a Saint), and some nights it’s Hazelle, with a strange-smelling tea. She says she learned about the tea from my mother, and after I drink it, my arms and legs and brain get too heavy to stay awake. Instead, I drift off into a dreamless remainder of the night.

On the rare occasion, Rory will stalk into our room, light on his foot and quick as a fox, sensing with hunter’s intuition about a storm and will gently shake me awake before the screams come. Most of the time we don’t speak; I nod my thanks and he understands and disappears as lickety-split as a shadow chased by the sun. On those days that we do head out into the woods, we spend an extra hour or two as a token of my thanks.

One night, I wake up with a gasp, barely escaping flame and singed blonde hair, to his fingers slightly outstretched to press to my shoulder, and I reach up to grip them. His hands are shaking, his face pale and drawn. I feel the echo of tear tracks on the skin of my cheeks, and in the moonlight, I finally notice that he’s been hurting also.

“I see her too, Katniss. Every single night,” he says, pulling away from me and disappearing as always like a ghost in the dust.

Rory turns out to be a formidable hunting partner, the lure of the woods shifting his feet and settling in his heart just as it had done to Gale. I would even say he’s more suited for the woods than his brother; Rory has less passion about the ways of the human world, and more for the crunch of leaves underfoot and the dappled sun across the forest floor. It’s a steady strum within him, like it was with my father. He’s lighter, and quicker up a tree than my old companion, and better suited to long range weaponry, but lacking the ability to track an animal to death like Gale could. Neither of us have the fingers skilled enough to set foolproof traps, so more than half of Gale’s old traps turn up empty. No one in Twelve ever again will rig traps as intricate, clean or deadly as Gale's. 

Rory’s memory is sharp and his attention to detail finely-tuned so much so that last week as I picked a few mushroom caps dusting the trunk of a conifer and brushed one off to pop it in my mouth, he darted over and smacked it out of my hand. 

"Those ain't for eatin', Katniss, just lookin'," he grunted and sent them flying in a spray of orange and white bits with a swift kick, then set after a pack of quail we had been following for the better part of an afternoon. I clenched a tight palm to my chest, not because I had yet again been faced with my own mortality, but because it pained me to realize I had forgotten the difference between Chanterelles and Jack-o-Lantern mushrooms—the only edible orange ones like that were found on the coast in Four. 

What else in my distraction am I forgetting?

Tonight, I finish all the chores early and Hazelle sends me upstairs to take a shower while she and Sae finish making the final touches to dinner. I put up a bit of a protest because I don’t want to be the only one not helping, but you can’t win with that woman. She’s heard it and fought it from four other headstrong children. Shower it is.

It is Sae’s birthday (whose insistence to help always wins out over Hazelle's protests, even on her birthday), and according to an old book back in pre-Panem times called the Farmer’s Almanac, a week before the start of Winter. In celebration of those who had kept the Seam afloat throughout the years in terms of food, Hazelle invited a very small gathering for dinner.

Of course Rory and I bagged the big game in preparation for the event: a pair of fat turkeys earlier in the week, and the serendipitous takedown of a fourteen-point buck that we stalked for two and a half weeks. Normally it would have taken me far longer to snag a stag that large, but the animals seem to think that in my absence they own the woods. It won’t be long before Rory and I reestablish our dominance, yet we’re thankful for the easy pickings.

It took the two of us plus Thom to drag it from the woods, and two more of his cohorts to finally heft it on to a table in the backyard. This animal would feed us and several other families for weeks; and that wasn’t counting all the game wrapped in thick butcher paper in Rooba’s storefront windows and in neat stacks in the Hawthorne’s fancy Capitol-furnished ice box.

As I round the stairs, I peer out the window at Thom, Rory, Hazelle’s cousin Marde, and another man named Brenton standing around a fire pit grill laying thick slabs of venison slathered in a cumin-garlic-coriander dry rub and laughing over a beer. Marde slings an arm over Rory and slicks him with a noogie while Thom prods him in the belly with a stick and gestures to the fire, no doubt in congratulations on such a fine haul. 

I was internally thankful that we turned up the heat in the weeks prior, pulling in the largest hunts at every opportunity we could, because I can taste the crisp tang of Winter on the evening breeze. No manner of brim-packed Capitol train can quell the gnawing anxiety that visits me with the promise of dead, soul-sucking starvation for my family each year around this time.

From up the way I see the thick silhouette of Haymitch and Effie’s shock of blonde bobbing up and down the path pulling a couple of boxes on a train transport cart.

I stand in mine and Posy’s room, transfixed, and consider the day of the festival (not the anxiety-inducing parts). I watch as the dust dances around in the waning sun that peeks in from the window. A light breeze finds its way in through the partially-opened window and shifts the white curtains. 

I am prodded gently by the nostalgia of a cool night at the tail end of Fall, curtains drifting in a slow pull to the floor and a blonde curl coiling around my index finger as I lay my cheek across warm pale skin and watch a customary blush bloom up his neck at my touch. I touch my lips and the faint taste of dill, cinnamon, and boy play at them. I brace myself at the foot of the bed, clinging to the wooden post as I wait for the rush of anxiety that surprisingly doesn’t come. A sigh rushes out of my lungs and I take a long shower to wash the aching relief from my bones.

My will to live has found a calming guidance and strength in routine and purpose, so it seems. And slowly I start to feel strength enough to push small mental limits.

Pulling on a loose heather-grey long sleeve, some ankle-cropped slacks, and simple black ballet flats, I run a brush through my hair and take a deep breath before skillfully weaving the French braid my mother made into the back of my head on Reaping day. Seeing it curling around the crown of my head thankfully induces nothing, and I push two earrings into my earlobes. 

I am not completely better by any means, but I am slowly mending through this sense of family I have experienced with the Hawthornes. Two dots of lavender oil along the tender skin of my wrists, and I head downstairs.

I can tell by a loud guffawing outside that Haymitch and Effie have arrived, and slither in behind Vick folding a pile of napkins to quietly make a cup of tea.

“Katniss!!” Posy chirps from my elbow, and I nearly flip my teacup.

“You and hot drinks, Poseybear,” I say and ruffle her hair. She beams up at me. I reach for the dish of sugar, but my mind decides otherwise. I wonder what it tastes like without. 

“Your hair is so pretty, Ka’nisss,” she croons. “Willya do mine that way?” I nod and she rushes off down the hall to grab her brush and hair things. She's so much like Prim sometimes with her youthful girlishness that my heart squeezes.

“Do we have enough time before dinner, Hazelle?” I say, grabbing a pile of plates and rounding the dining room to set them at the start of the buffet dresser.

“Plates’ll be ready in twenty, go tell tha boys once yer done, wouldja Katniss?” Hazelle calls over the sound of Thom’s wife working at the loud mixing of dessert, and she swings around me with a dishtowel thrown over her shoulder and two mitts clutching a pan of something starchy and mouth-watering. 

Posy returns, all wiggles and bright eyes, and I grip her little hand in my own to pull her out the back door and onto the porch. Hazelle did well with this house; the porch is as long as the house and nearly as wide as the living room, so there is plenty of space to hang out and watch the sunsets over the steam of hot chocolate with lots of people, or make an assembly line for folding and packaging the week's laundry orders. We sit on the last wooden step and I set to work on Posy's hair.

"Sweetheart, why don'tcha come sit over here with us?" Haymitch yells. He is followed by a chorus of agreement from the men and Marde. I sigh, and string up bits of Posy's half-braided hair and gently lead her to one of the many Adirondack chairs and long makeshift log benches that circle the fire. 

"Food'll be ready in twenty," I say and push a couple of bobbies into her thick curly hair. 

"Well don't you look like a normal human being now," Haymitch leers and raises his drink. The bourbon makes a thick stain swirl around the glass and disappears into his maw. The men, which now includes Brillum the butcher's eldest son (and only survivor) and Reaver, one of the goat-man's kin, resume their conversation about the new production of stills in District Three and the rise in quality of liquor throughout Panem. 

Effie claps her hands together and trots over to me in her thick mulberry-colored pea coat. She's far too overdressed for the chill--the rest of us are in light long sleeves and cotton pants; Rory and Thom have their britches folded up to the knees, and it looks silly hanging high over their boots. Capitolites are not used to the weather here in Twelve, and you can always tell them apart from the rest of us because they're in parkas by mid-September. 

"The last time I saw you, I thought I'd seen a ghost," she nearly whispers.

"You did," I say. I'm finished with Posy's second braid, and run some bobbies through to curl it at the nape of her neck. She pats her head and fingers the braid a few times as an inspection, and satisfied, leaps from the chair.

"How are you doing, dear?" She says gently, and smiles as she places a gloved hand soft as her manner has turned since the games on my shoulder.

"I'm better," I say lamely. She knows I was never good at talking about myself, and even less so now.

"We make her eat real good, Ms. Effie!" Posy pipes up. "Mama said she'll have no more girls in District Twelve dyin' from bein' starved, and especially not when it's starvin' by choice! It's my job to make sure we both eat pretty much our whole entire plate!" Her chest puffs up with her pride.

"Well that's wonderful, Posy," Effie says. "You know what? I'll make you Honorary Meal Police for the Mockingjay (this part she whispers) in the official registry at the Capitol when I go back on Monday, first thing!"

"You'd do that, Ms. Effie??"

"Of course, sweetie. I'm a very important lady, you know, and important ladies like you and I need to stick together."

"OH YAY I'M GONNA GO TELL MAMAAAAAAAAAA, I'LL BE IMPORTANT JUST LIKE GALE," Posy shrieks and runs off into the house.

I give Effie a shell-shocked look. "Since when were you so good with children?" I ask incredulously. I didn't mean to come off as rude, but even still, she was far used to it by now.

"Since I haven't had to cart them off to their death,” she says. She smiles and sits down in a chair, sweeping her arm for me to do the same. “This may come as a surprise, Katniss, but I've always loved children, especially since I could never have any of my own--I'm barren, you see--but for a while, at least at the beginning, I was bitter about it, and my anger took the edge off of the horror of what the Games actually were. Many of us knew the Games and the Capitol were inherently wrong, but you saw what happened to those who tried to fight back before you came along. I’d make a terrible Avox—I’d still try to talk to everyone, and make those gosh-awful noises.” She closes her eyes and drinks in a bit of the warmth from the fire. 

Seeing Effie so sober and candid stuns me, and I have nothing to say in response.

“We were cowards, all of us, and selfish too—it was so easy to look the other way and choose our way of life over the security and safety of your children.” Her hand trembles as she grips the edge of her coat, and in an urge I can’t explain, I reach out my hand to her. I cannot entirely forgive her for what she and her like has done to us for so long, but I feel a lot of the contempt for Capitolites start to ebb. We were all pieces of Snow and his regime’s terrible games. If we all remained angry at each other after his death, he’d still be winning.

“I’m sorry about your loss,” I say in reference to her infertility. She bursts out a quick laugh to keep herself from crying, and looks at me, wide-eyed. “Oh Katniss. There is never a reason in all of this world for _you_ to apologize to _me_ ,” she says, dabbing her gloved pinky at the corner of her eye. “The odds just were never in my favor.” 

She dips a dainty hand into one of her large pockets and pulls out two tan boxes with a bit of twine around them. “These are for you,” she says, handing them to me. “I found them and wanted to give them to you during your trial, and several times after, but things just were never right. I would recommend opening the smaller box at a time you’re feeling 100% better,” she warns, and I slide it into the top of my boot. 

I pull the twine off the larger box gingerly and pull apart the tissue paper. A small electronic box with a screen sits in the middle and a wire with two small pods is wrapped around it. I pick it up and peer at it.

“It’s an old device, probably from when we were teens,” Effie laughs. “Back when they made those things to survive the apocalypse. Cinna still kept his, and instructed me to give it to you after the Quell. It stores music, which you listen to through these.” She plucks it out of my hand, unwrapping the cord, and waves her palm over the screen. A light leaps out of it and translucent blue boxes, squares with pictures in them, and words hover in the air. 

“May I?” I nod, not sure of what she’s asking, and she extends a little white pod toward my head--the other one trails off into her curls. Before I realize it, she’s gently stuffed it inside my good ear. It feels strange, and I stick a finger in my other ear to itch the sensation away. She flicks a finger in the air over the hologram, looking through albums, I realize, and settles on a song. 

My ear is suddenly filled with twittering laughter, the peal of an electric guitar and heavy percussion. 

“Oh goodness, Duran Duran! Such a classic—since way before the war! Cinna never was into the current music fads, always preferred the oldies. I absolutely love his taste in music—I’d say it even surpasses his taste in fashion!” She titters. “Anyway, it’s pretty easy to navigate, and Cinna told me there are a couple of secret playlists with songs he handpicked for you, but you’ll have to do a bit of searching on the hard drive. After you play around with it a bit, you’ll find its userface is simple.”

“Thank you, Effie,” I say. I mean it. The urge for waterworks prick in the corner of my eyes, and I blink back the tears. Anything of Cinna’s I will forever treasure. It is so very like him to be perceptive enough to give me the gift of music.

“You can still download any song that’s in the central database, if you want. I will admit, a lot of the new music is shit. Hook it into any television’s mainframe and it’ll prompt you. But he has enough music on there to last your entire lifetime and then some.” 

Hazelle’s voice booms from the kitchen window. “Time to eat! Come on in!”

Haymitch ruffles the top of my head as he passes by with the boys, and I glower at him. We all file into the kitchen, talking amongst ourselves and giving Sae birthday wishes and our thanks for helping with the meal. Sae’s granddaughter and Posy run around in the living room. 

Everything is as it should be, a house filled with friends and family.

So naturally when I open the front door after the doorbell rings, it is Peeta Mellark holding a basket brimming with baked goods, his face alight with a hopeful smile and his plus one at his arm who stand mere feet in front of me.


	5. Heartburn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, here’s the gift of a quick update on the Day of Thanks (cliffhangers SUCK)! Secondly, I was a bit apprehensive with how this chapter was going to go, considering how many of you felt about Peeta being in Twelve (with another girl). There’s always gotta be drama, or there’s no story, but I hope that people understand Katniss has her quiet strength to help her come to grips with pretty much anything life throws her. That’s why I enjoy her so much as a character.  
> Doesn’t mean it won’t be hard though.
> 
> That said, she’s a teeny bit OOC in terms of language, but… I think given the circumstances, this is probably how she would act anyway.
> 
> Here's to awkward dinners with estranged company!
> 
> Happy Holidays!

Five: Heartburn

Dimples. Those little boomerang curves in the soft skin at the corners of his mouth that show themselves when his face cracks open in a genuine smile (not the one he gave me or the cameras during our Victory Tour, but the one he wore when we tasted hot chocolate for the first time, or the one when I gasped in awe at his drawings in the Plant Book he made in between Games). I’ve earned the privilege to kiss them a handful of times. 

I’ve seen them on the small of his back too, and they stopped right before the tender curvature of his backside, dappled in pale moonlight as the trees passed by in the train windows. 

Now I watch them hungrily as they disappear from his face, his smile ebbing away into a look of pure shock. I don’t bother with manners or making an introduction. His eyes are wide, mouth hanging open, as though he has never seen me before. As though our eyes haven’t met each other’s a million times, reading a million different things reflected in them. Death. Life. Betrayal, love, comfort, relief, subdued joy. 

Surprisingly, the freckles on his checks are emphasized by a rush of blood to his face. Is he blushing?

“H-hi, I’m, uh—” He tries.

“Peeta,” the woman next to him offers. Her face is also red and freckled, tan even, and her green hazeled eyes are turbulent with all manners of strange emotion as she looks at me. She lifts a pristine white bakery box she holds in her hands up just a little, as an offering, and puffs a curled bang from her eyes with a quick breath. She’s there, in a cream-colored dress made of soft lace. 

“…Made this cake for Sae,” she says, almost too quiet for me to hear her, but I have the automatic sensors working in my Capitol ear that allow me to pick up on the words. Her voice is soft and I hear inflected notes of shame. The way her body inverts away from me and toward Peeta is reminiscent of the omega wolf turning belly to the alpha female. Prey submitting to the predator after relenting to the sheer exhaustion of struggling for a few more seconds of life. 

She is embarrassed around me, I suddenly realize. I stand there, mouth in a thin line, blinking slowly. My fingers yearn to itch at the burning seams of my scars but I instead hide my hands by stretching the sleeves of my shirt over them. I should usher Peeta and the girl inside, be polite and civil, because it’s going to be a big, big, big day, and the world is a stage with everyone watching—

“Thank you much, chil’, bring the cake and come on in,” Sae says behind me, and I feel a firm palm against the small of my back. She ushers me away from the doorway. Her warm calluses provide an anchor, and I drift back down to Earth.

Peeta’s eyes finally slide away from me, and he clamps his mouth shut with a loud click of his teeth to compose himself. The pair makes no motion to move inside. 

Hazelle has come in to see what the commotion is about and pales when she looks at me. She sizes me up, trying to determine if I will respond with fight or flight. I stand frozen against the wall next to Sae, my consciousness acutely aware of how close he is to me. I want to hide in her skirts like a toddler around strangers. 

The matriarchal Hawthorne takes a hold of the show and plucks the cake from the girl. Sae follows her lead and takes the basket of bread from Peeta’s frozen hands. He finally moves, unsure of what to do with them now.

“Oh Sae, we don’t want to impose,” he says as he gives a sheepish shrug and finally stuffs them in his pockets. “We meant to bring it earlier, but I just finished it. Took me a little longer to get the color for the icing just right.”

I am vaguely aware the entire house is silent.

I can’t do this, I say to myself, and focus on inhaling and exhaling. I had done so well earlier. I don’t think I have any steam left. Surely testing my mental limits still applies here?

“Peeta, mah boy, come on in!” Haymitch yells. I hear the clinking of glass, and I’m sure he’s helping himself to a refill. He’s two sheets to the wind by now, most likely more. I want to join him. 

“Peeta? Peeta Mellark?” Effie shrieks. I can practically taste the anxiety in her voice, and I want to gag. A professional socialite, she can smell the tension in the air of a party from miles away.

I curl a lock of hair that escapes my braid behind my ear and clear my throat. Once again, I find myself in possession of the reigns for how a situation will go with a large group of people, and I sigh.

“Let’s eat, then,” I grunt, and turn foot towards the dining room. I make it a point to ignore the rest of the people inside—I am very familiar with the feeling of being gawked at— and make a beeline for the buffet line. The tension washes away, and others resume their conversations as they line up behind me and grab their plates. 

Effie brushes past me and into the foyer to round up Peeta. “Surely you’ll stay for some food?” She asks.

“J-just for a little while,” he stutters. I feel his gaze burning into my back. “I’m escorting Clairen back to Four for the week, and we’ve got to pack once we get back.” I grip my plate, hard. 

“Wait up, Katniss! Meat’s here.” Rory comes in from the backyard with an overflowing platter of grilled venison, and sidles in between people to get to me. Smoked game and the “ooh”s and “ahh”s of others waft around us. Immediately I can see he feels something off. I feel it too—when the woods around you get too quiet. Usually means a large predator is in the vicinity. Without setting it down, he scans the house and his eyes fall to me.

“Katniss?” He says when I look up at him. His forehead has the exact same concern crinkles as Gale.

“I’m fine, Rory,” I say, unable to turn away fast enough from him, and ladle large portions of turkey chili, sweet corn, Swiss and spinach quiche, and rice pilaf onto my plate. With a fork, I stab two slabs of meat from the tray before clearing away a spot on the buffet line for him to place it.

He blinks at me under a furrowed brow but shrugs, knowing he’s not going to get anything else from me, and cuts in front of Marde to start fixing his own meal. She slaps him hearty on the shoulder and gives him a smile—he has every right to step to the front of the line after helping bring in a meal like this, and she gives him her thanks.

“Going outside to eat,” I announce to no one in particular, and dip into the kitchen for a copper mug filled with juniper gin and juice. I’m certain this is even too much for Haymitch in one sitting.

I push the pilaf and chili into a garbled mess onto one side, paying far more attention to the already half-consumed contents of my mug than anything else. Rory left the fire going, and I sit close to the flames. The warmth of it couples deliciously with the ruddying of my cheeks. 

Once the dining room fills, people file outside with their food and sit in staggering spots around the fire. Peeta and Clairen stay tucked inside, and I hear Effie’s voice tittering from the open window. Good, she’s keeping them occupied. Smart woman.

Brenton, Thom, and his wife and Posy come outside a little while later with sticks, marshmallows and graham crackers to make smores over small conversation about Posy’s elementary schoolwork. I limit my conversation to stilted one-liners, and instead nurse the gin in its waning existence. Posy hands me the next smore, and I relish the sweet sticky warmth on my tongue as it gives me something to do instead of talk.

“Come in and grab some cake,” Hazelle yells from the porch door, and her eyes scan the yard quickly to find me. I see relief in her posture; she is glad I haven’t run off blind into the woods with the temperature dropping and such conflict of emotion swelling within me. She lingers for a second and then the crack of the door closing echoes off the trees. 

Everyone gets up, except for me, but no one is insisting I join them inside. Twenty more minutes pass, and my mug is empty. I briefly consider going inside for another round, but a breeze whispers through the trees and comes to meet me. I turn my head to the woods. I know ghosts of the dead await me in there. 

I could just as easily escape into the forest and disappear forever, if I wanted. I feel it, such a small pull, a stirring in my belly, tug the bottom of my heart in the direction of the darkness.

“Katniss?” 

I whip my head around to Peeta’s voice. My heart is flung into my throat.

He stands there, his good leg lingering casually behind his prosthetic in mid-step, with his hands stuffed in his pockets. It looks awkward because his hands are too big for them. He too bows submissively towards me from the other side of the fire, a flame grabbing out in the darkness from the end of a wick. He wears an apologetic smile, and scratches at the back of his curls.

“I don’t mean to come off as a creep,” he says, watching me carefully. He’s become so perceptive since our childhood, his senses ever on the alert because of the constant terror and threat of danger in the landscape of the Games. The summer we returned as Victors, I had noticed he was much more leery of being outside in the dark. He scans the horizon with a flick of a casual glance, checking for a shifting shadow in the darkness or the flash of light reflecting on a blade. 

I wondered what happened to him out there in the woods, or in the dripping darkness of the torture cells, not knowing when they'd come and submerge his consciousness into a fog of hallucinations and needles. I look at my lap, unsure of how to respond to this swelling of regret for his loss of innocence in my chest. The familiar feeling that this is my fault threatens to envelope me.

“We’ve met a couple of times, but you never told me your name, so I asked Haymitch who you were.” His looming over me brings about the beginnings of an anxiety attack, so I gesture with a nod for him to sit and clear the air. He takes the seat a few feet from me, and leans his elbows on the armrest as he crosses his fingers in a loose casual manner. He seems more at ease now than I’ve seen him in a long time.

I sigh. Inevitably this meeting would have to happen as long as he remains in Twelve. 

It takes me a while to speak. “And what did he tell you?” My voice sounds dead.

“I, uh, am not sure,” Peeta laughs, the sound rich and deep and foreign, and his thick blonde eyebrows scrunch together. “He said for me to ask you. Very puzzling man sometimes.”

“You’re telling me,” I mutter. “I will _never_ understand that man.”

“You two know each other? I thought he never left Victor’s Village.”

“Unless there’s alcohol involved, he doesn’t.” 

Peeta responds with another deep laugh and looks down at his hands. “You seem so… familiar to me, and I don’t know why. Have you always lived in Twelve?”

“Yes,” I say, but my voice hitches. Shit. I sorely wish for another mug of gin and juice.

What can I tell him? Is there anything that triggers him? Where are our chaperones, I don’t know what to tell him! Effie’s here, so where are the damn cuecards? Whose idea was it for him to come here? Why are they leaving us out here alone? Is he still hijacked?

I reacquaint myself with another more manipulative side of me I hadn’t seen since the Games. The one with the silver tongue only put to use in terms of dire social survival.

“I mean, until my father died in the mines. Then my mother and I moved to Seven to escape the memories, but during the War she died, so I came back here,” I offer lamely.

His face folds with grief. “I’m really very sorry, Katniss. I lost my family too. Snow’s firebombs. So many people lost so much because of Snow.” His fists tremble against his corduroy dress pants. The heat of the fire brings on the bloomy patch of skin from his chest to his neck, and a trickle of sweat pools in the cup where his clavicles meet. He was always so warm anyway. I have an urge to reach over and refold the sleeve of his blouse from falling off of his elbow. Instead, I trace the lines of his muscled forearm with my eyes.

Remembering the pain is stressful for him. _Join the club_ , I want to say, but I suppose he's been in it for nearly as long as I have.

“It’s alright. It’s all over now—you and the rebels took care of that,” I grunt. Silence follows. I will him to get up and leave.

“So, Ms. Katniss,” he smiles and tries to wink (a talent he never truly mastered, so instead, he gives me an awkward separate blink), “what do you do for work and play here in Twelve?”

I roll my eyes, finding it hard not to smile. “I hunt with Rory and help Hazelle with her laundry business.”

He looks excited, his face so young and unblemished by war. I’m suddenly self-conscious of my scars. “So you’re the one that helped bring in that buck I’ve heard the whole town gush about! Really, that was very good. Thom went on and on about how clean of a kill it was. ‘Scuse the language, but, best damn meat I’ve had in ages.”

I ignore my heart as it squeezes, and respond with a grunt. 

He continues to sing my praises as he talks animatedly with his hands. I watch his crooked pinky as it sticks out a little farther from his hand swinging to and fro. “And you guys do a great job with the clothes. Clairen’s always so worried when I send you pants covered in flour and dough, but, I have complete faith in Hazelle’s ability to restore them to working order. I can’t thank you both enough.”

Come to think of it, I’ve never seen any clothes with dough on them, so Hazelle must prescreen the jobs before divvying out the duties to me. 

“Dough’s not so bad,” I say, and I subconsciously realize how easily I am sucked into conversation with him, “but red paint would be another story. Devilish stuff.” Blood's a bitch, also.

He blinks at me and laughs nervously. 

I catch myself. “Yeah, um. You paint, right? They had a special about it after the Games.”

“O-oh. Well yeah,” he says. “Somehow the strokes of the brush help calm me, especially after a bad dream.”

We sit there in silence because I don’t trust myself to speak. I take to watching his feet as his boots shift into a more comfortable position. His shoes are a lot bigger than I remember—how much has he grown since I kissed him back to me as we fled the sewers? 

“Oh!” He jumps in his seat. “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry for a few months back, when we first met. I’m really not that… awkward, but… that house is a soft spot for me. I feel very protective over it. I didn’t mean to come off as rude, you just startled me,” he says earnestly. “Do you know the Everdeens?”

I want to laugh long and hard in his face, but he’s just so much like a fawn in his innocent curiosity that I stifle it after a bark escapes my mouth. This is ridiculous, the drunken majority of my brain reels. He needs to know the truth, better now than later. I’m not just some damn secret they can hide away forever—

But as I search his face, my resolve to destroy the world that he knows a second time crumbles into ash. He is so open and vulnerable now, and the pained looked he wore while fighting off shiny images as we journeyed through the rubble of the Capitol in search for Snow flashes in the slosh of my brain. I don’t ever want such hurt or confusion to mar his sweet face again. 

That’s right, didn’t I vow to give him a second chance? A real shot for one of us to climb out of the bomb–holed Hell of our past and survive with relative sanity still intact. A real chance at a life.

He’s moved on, and so will I.

“I know of them. I just… wanted a glimpse of ground zero,” I nearly whisper as I finger my braid. It’s the only thing tethering me to the ground right now.

He eyes it and his face grows bright with an internal epiphany. “I do remember you.” He starts to fidget in his seat, and sweat beads at the tip of his brow. His manner changes so quickly. “In elementary school, with a red dress, and you sang,” he stutters, almost murmuring to himself, although he’s torn between smiling and grimacing. He pants. “It was red, with some plaid. And those braids, two of them, down your back…”

Not this painful, shitty rerun again. Another ancient survival instinct surges into my limbs to mingle with my alcohol-enriched blood; the one that propelled me to notch my bow with an arrow to his heart as he stepped off that convoy van and into the ranks of Squad 451. He’s too fidgety, too sweaty, like a doe catching my scent on the wind but unable to place my location as I stalk her. I can hear his skin crawl. I watch it pucker into stress-induced goosebumps.

“It’s a little chilly out here, don’t you think? Let’s get back inside, I’m sure Clairen (her name tastes weird in my mouth) is wondering where you went off to, hm?” I say and bend down to dump my full plate into the lawn. My senses are too dead to allow me to cry. I curl a finger around my mug and sling an arm under his armpit to steady him from the chair. I’m fueled by a drunken bravado and the undying habit to protect him from himself. 

He grips my arm and unknowingly leans into me for support. My skin leaps at his touch. I just have to endure this a little longer. 

“Yeah,” he coughs and his face falls into a smile. There’s little sign of his struggle, but he mops his brow with a sleeve anyhow. “Winter’s on its way for sure. I would have given you my jacket, but…” he trails off.

“I know. I didn’t prepare well for outside either. Thank Rory for the fire.” We head back toward the porch, and I keep a couple of steps ahead of Peeta. I am eager to get inside for another drink so I can drown the jittery sorrow I feel peeling at my edges.

“So, you guys hunt together?” He trots up ahead of me to grab the screen door and I dart inside. The lights and warmth are sobering.

“Taught him how,” I manage to say.

“That’s really cool.” He is in awe as he says this. Clairen rounds the corner of the kitchen, and she eyes him with a worried expression. He claps an arm around her waist and pulls her against his chest for a chaste kiss. I know his lips are cold because she pulls away in an instant. There’s genuine concern on her face, as though he may be hurt somewhere. Her eyes dart like rapid-fire bullets side to side as she looks at him. 

I know that look: I wore my concern for him on my features as often as I wore my father’s hunting jacket. There's a possessiveness in her pupils that mirrors mine during he Quarter Quell footage.

So this is what love looks like on the outside.

When she turns to me, her expression melts into that same scared embarrassed look. There’s a hint of reverence there—it’s the instinctual look everyone gives the Mockingjay, regardless how they feel about me as a person. _I’m the very last person to hurt him_ , my eyes say as I squint at her in a scowl. My reputation swells between us, but Peeta is so blissfully oblivious to it.

I can barely stand it. I won’t be patronized; this is my turf. I square my shoulders and spread my feet apart, fully ready to defend it.

“Katniss,” he says warmly as he turns around to me, and the train of anger putters to a stop. His arm still circles her trim waist. The dimples return. “It really was great to talk to you. It’s nice to put a name to a face, you know?”

“It would have been better off if you hadn’t,” I scoff, loud and ripe with phlegm and out of the corner of my eye I see both of their faces become pale with shock at my indecency, but I twirl around to the kitchen. My normal self, the one currently stuffed uncomfortably into a corner of my mind, chides me for acting like Haymitch, but I can’t find the will to care. I want to be lost in oblivion. I want to numb the pain and feelings and regret and longing and weakness of myself, the malleability he has over me, and the utter pisspoor timing of it all. I think I’ll just crawl into a barrel and drown myself in pure white liquor.

I deserve this, I know. 

“You’ll have to excuse her,” Haymitch drawls, having watched the whole thing from his seat at the dining table. “Manners were never her strong suit.” He’s sneering at me. 

This was all his idea. I’m going to kill him. 

Peeta laughs and shrugs it off. His inner psyche must inherently know that I was always rude, am always rude, and will always be rude. He’s still apologizing to everyone else for the way I am. It makes it all the more unbearable. 

“We’ve got to be going anyhow,” he says. “Thank you all so much for inviting us in. Haymitch, I’ll see you next week.” He tips his head to Hazelle, gives Sae a hug, and the two disappear out the door. The women follow them not too long after.

I take the bottle of bourbon and tip it back into my throat. It burns as it reaches the scarred pitting of my esophagus where the flames licked into my lungs. 

“I didn’t know you were so well-acquainted with the sauce.” Haymitch appears behind me and tries to rip the bottle from my hand to take a swig, but I am far more coordinated than him and dance out of his way. 

I finish the last dregs at the bottom. I don’t know where everyone else has disappeared to, but it’s just me and him in the house. Perhaps the Hawthornes are seeing the rest of the guests out. Perhaps they know this was coming.

I smash the bottle on the counter, and glass explodes onto the floor in a spray between us.

“This was your fucking idea,” I snarl and turn on him with a jagged piece of bottle in one hand and a steak knife in the other. I’m clenching the makeshift dagger so tightly that blood dribbles down my palm and falls to the floor in soft plaps. “You invited him here to toy with me, to dangle him and her in front of my face and sabotage everything I’ve worked so hard to overcome. Why do I continue to trust you?”

“I know you’re just looking for a fight, Sweetheart, but I’m old and my bones are tired.”

I lunge closer to him with the knife raised above my head. “Tell me! What is he still doing here in Twelve?”

Haymitch almost looks bored, but at least his hackles are halfway-raised. “Sweetheart, I had no idea the boy was going to come and stay for dinner, but whom else in this damn District is going to make the _birthday_ cake? Who around here besides him knows how to make bread that’s actually edible? Who else is going to feed these people, huh?” He flashes his hands to show me they’re empty. I swirl the blade around in my palm and crouch partially to my knees. Drunk or not, I’m a hunter, and good at it too. I’ve killed people and animals, more than him, at least directly, and he knows it.

“I dunno, literally ANYONE else in all of Panem but _Peeta Mellark_.”

He laughs and grips the small table littered with mail, bottles, and other kitchen knickknacks that sits underneath the window. “Yeah, alright. He’s the baker, and always will be the baker, and whether or not you get your shit together shouldn’t be the limiting factor to the rest of us living the rest of our lives.”

I look at him incredulously. Fire roars in my ears. “That’s it? After all of this, that’s all you can say to me? After all you’ve done?” I picture my fingers cramming into the fat skin of his neck and closing off the air to his lungs.

“I’m not going to baby you,” he snarls back.

I slam the knife into the wood of the counter and the dishes rattle in the sink. “Damn you, Haymitch, you son-of-a-bitch! I’m not asking you to baby me! You’re supposed to be my mentor, damnit! You’re supposed to protect me! You were supposed to protect _him_! Why did you pick me over him? Why didn’t you have the decency to let me die in that arena so I don’t have to watch her ashes pull through my fingers every waking day? Why did you let him come back here? Can’t I just be left alone??” 

The tears spill over my eyelids, and feel foreign trailing down my cheeks. I haven’t cried in over a year. “You have yet to _once_ protect me from anything!” I drop the broken bottle to the floor and it falls in the pool of blood before I slide down to the floor. My shoes make an invasive squeal on the linoleum.

“I was supposed to protect the both of you,” he says, crestfallen. Haymitch looks uncomfortable. Knives and the raging death threats he can deal with; the uncontrollable tears of a woman are a whole other beast. He grips the back of his head and finds a half-empty bottle of something before he pulls himself into a wooden chair, utterly deflated.

“Listen, Sweetheart. I’m sorry, really, truly,” he says, and offers me the bottle. I take it, and draw a long while from it before pulling it back from my lips with a smack.

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you where you stand,” I say. I barely have the energy or will to remain conscious as I sit on the floor, let alone follow through with any death threats.

“Well, for starters, I’m sitting.” I give him the meanest look I can muster, and he throws up his hands again. “Alright, alright. You never let anyone into that brain of yours. Nobody knew you were hurtin’ that bad over him. Shit, I wasn’t even really sure you loved him back until I saw your reflection in that hospital room window when we pulled him outta Snow’s torture chambers.”

“I wasn’t sure either,” I say to my hands. The lines in my palm look wobbly, and I peer at them so intently that I convince myself I can see blue blood oozing through the vessels. There's blood on my hand again. Am I in another nightmare?

“As for why he’s here and not anywhere else, where’s he supposed to go, Katniss?” 

I fling up my shoulders in what I hope to look like a casual shrug. There are at least eleven other districts, not to mention whatever else uncharted land lay forgotten in burnt up maps and dusty archives. 

“He ain’t got nowhere else to go but here. He’d never make it in the Capitol. People need him here, he has a job, and a purpose. Twelve’s his home. We can actually protect him in Twelve.” I feel him staring at me, and I know he’s referencing the deal we made before the Quarter Quell.

“It’s not my job to protect someone who doesn’t even know who the hell I am.”

“No, it’s not,” he agrees and finishes off the bottle. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t do it anyway. Every single day.”

“Yeah, well, he’s got Clairen to worry about him now.” I’m partly sick at how acidic my words sound.

“There’s no need to hate that girl, now, Sweetheart. Little thing’s Annie’s second cousin, been in love with Peeta since his face showed up on the big screen in the first Games. While he was in rehab from the procedure, he helped Annie take care of mini-Finnick. Course she was there too. That girl made him feel what it was like to be loved again. For real.” He gives me a sideways glance and my head falls back onto the cabinet. I clench my eyes shut. 

I wish he wasn’t so right all the time.

“You know if you had a mind to really fuck things up for the two of them, you’d have gone and done it already. You also know he’d trudge through Hellfire to get back to you again if you wanted him to. And yet here you sit in the company of your delightful mentor, and he’s not out there rolling around foaming at the mouth trying to figure out what’s ‘real or not real’ because you vindictively went and spilt the beans, all the while you stand over him and threaten to let an arrow fly in his throat ‘cause you’re not entirely sure he won’t kill you. Why do you think that is?”

“I’m only here with you for the white liquor,” I say. This elicits a long bout of laughter from Haymitch. My face can’t help but crack a smirk.

We share a comfortable silence as we both try to keep the room from spinning too quickly. “I want the one of us to have a chance,” I say. “He deserves it, out of all of us.”

“If there’s anyone who has a shot at redemption, it’s Peeta,” Haymitch agrees. “But that don’t mean you’re no less deserving of a better life—you’re the one who earned it. You need to take care of yourself. I mean that, Sweetheart.”

“I don’t know if I can, Haymitch. No more games. I'm tired.”

“Neither of us can control what he does. It very well may be that you’re there, along with all the memories and the pain, tied to a cinderblock at the bottom of his ocean and one day the line’s gonna run all to shit and everything’s gonna resurface. Then we’ll just have to pick up the pieces. Maybe he’ll never remember, and good on him. But either way, you gotta give yourself a try. Forget him for now. Find yourself a life worth living. That’s the gift they gave us. Prim and them all, you know.”

I wrench my head up to look at him, her name ringing in my skull, but before I can say anything, Rory and Vick rush in. They both hover, unsure of what to do with me.

“Katniss, are you alright?” Vick asks and he and Rory grab me by an arm to wrench me up. “I know Mr. Peeta was here—” He pales when he sees blood.

I jerk my arms out of their grip and stumble my way to the bottom stair. 

“Oi, Sweetheart. You should go look at the cake. Really is beautiful,” Haymitch says and stumbles out the front door into the night.

Rory stares after me for a second, weighing the option of helping me upstairs to bed and getting pummeled, or leaving me be. In no time, he pulls Vick out into the backyard to douse the fire. 

I tentatively make my way to the dining room table and for some strange reason I am gripped with uneasy nerves. 

It is a long sheet cake, with soft icing and spongey yellow cake, like the ones Prim used to drool over as we stared at them from outside of the bakery window. I know simply by sight and smell that it is the kind that is warm and melts on your tongue.

Although it is a quarter-eaten, with small squares politely carved out of random places, I can make out the scenery of the meadow in long strokes of greens and golds as a sunset peaks over the horizon. In the forefront is the silhouette of a slender girl lounging on a thick tree branch as she holds a stalk outstretched. Long wisps of dandelion seeds dance into perspective on an invisible wind.

The girl could easily pass as a young Sae, or any one for that matter—she’s made up of black icing.

Only I, possibly Haymitch, and the old Peeta know who the girl in the meadow is.

I feel like I am going to be sick.

I don’t know where I will go, but I need to leave District Twelve.


	6. Gridlines

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so it goes! Happy day after the Fourth.

.::Six: Gridlines::.

I am graciously allowed to sleep all the next day. No crisp crack of the curtains being pulled back to let in the morning sun, no creaking of the bed from Posy’s weight as she scampers to get ready for school. I am dead to the entire world with a terrible migraine. I toss around in sweat-soaked sheets, and my organs feel thoroughly coated in acid.

Hazelle comes in to check on me around mid-afternoon, and I struggle to sit up on my elbows. I groan—a piss poor attempt at an apology—but she tuts and shakes her head as she sets a mug of tea with milk, and a jug full of water on the night table. She gently presses a palm to my shoulder for me to lie back down.

“Even the Mockingjay’s no match for Ripper’s legacy,” she says as she sits at the foot of my bed. I groan louder—I hate that title. “Sometimes you gotta put evil in to get all the evil out, baby.” She squeezes a foot. “I’m not makin’ Rore do much of anything today either 'cause it's his birthday. This day’s on me for the deer. Any more will cost ya.”

Foggily, I reprimand myself for forgetting he turned sixteen today. I'll have to make it up to him.

“Yes ma’am,” I manage to mutter before turning my face into the pillow.

Two weeks later, it is Rory who squeezes my foot to wake me. “Katniss, Katniss!” He hisses.

“What?” I quip and jerk my knee nearly to my chin.

“You ready to head out today?” His whisper comes from above.

“This early?” I squint at the window. The sky is still a dark blue canvas with tiny dots of light twinkling back at me. “Don’t we have chores to do?” 

He shakes his head, and his hair lops across his eyes. “Nah. Ma said we should spend as much time as we can out there while it’s not too cold out. Winter’s gonna be rough this year since it’s been so warm up ‘til now and there’s a lot of mouths to feed. Trains might not make it this far out come late January.” 

I sit up immediately and swing my legs around. The sense of purpose knowing we can hunt all day uncensored pumps me full of adrenaline. Perhaps today I can give Rory his birthday present while we’re out.

He drops a pile of clothes into my lap and tilts his head at it. “Gale’s old long johns and a pullover. It’s verra cold out today,” he says. They’re discolored from age but smell clean. I shiver, but it’s uncertain to me if it’s from the prospective weather or the mention of his brother’s name. 

Rory leaves and I get dressed. It takes several times to fold Gale’s long johns along with my pants into the cuff of my boots. I slide on my hunting jacket and rub the collar against my top lip. It’s an old habit but it puts me at ease.

Hazelle has a plate of eggs and bacon already steaming at the kitchen side table, and a mug of black coffee and orange juice to go with it. Rory’s already three-fourths of the way through his meal when I sit down, and I can see him practically trembling to get out into the woods. It’s only about a week since we’ve made it out there last, but if he’s anything like me or his brother, it’s been a week too long.

I strap my bow to my back and Hazelle comes over with our game bags to plant a kiss on both of our foreheads. As she slides it on her son’s shoulder, he pulls his spear from the kitchen corner and situates it comfortably between the bag and his back. “Ya’ll be safe out there. Forest gets squirrelly when things start to get cold. Give yourselfs enough time to be back an hour ‘fore dark, understand?”

“Yes, mama,” Rory groans.

“Here, I’ve packed an extra deerskin a piece with water. You ken still get dehydrated when it’s fros—”

“ **MA**. You were never like this when Gale went out!”

“Ah know, ah know,” she shakes her hands at him to shoo him outside. “I can’t afford to lose any more of my baby boys,” she says. 

“I’m not a baby anymore,” he mumbles as he heads out the back door. I shrug at Hazelle and follow him into the frost. It cuts at my cheeks, and I hunker down into the fluffed collar of my sweater.

I can’t help but laugh at the angry lines that make up Rory’s shoulders. He is stomping along our worn trail to the woods, and without looking back he grunts, “Shut it, Katniss.”

“She is right though. It’s easy to let your guard down when the temperature’s low. I’ve done it one time. I was lucky your brother was with me.” He stops to look at me, frowning. I know he feels the same depressed disappointment anytime Gale is mentioned that I do.

Sometimes I forget that it is more than just me who lost their entire world when Prim died.

We take to the clearing that runs parallel to the tree line and make South in the direction of the meadow. Silence falls around us save for the crunching of our feet over frozen dew on grass and the hot plumes of our breath against the morning air. A dense fog blankets the meadow and moves like the slow pull of a dream. 

Rory stoops down abruptly and pulls the last of a dandelion from the ground. My breath catches in my throat and I’m surprised there’s even one still lingering around in this bitter morning frost. He reaches over to my chin to check for yellow, an old Seam children's game, and satisfied, tucks it in his coat pocket. “Butter's in the pan.”

“Fry it fast as you can,” I reply with a voice both slow and soft. I wear a gentle smile as we continue to trudge on. There is no way Rory would know how much that little flower represents in my life, and despite the sadness that clings to me always, seeing one stand as a sentry at the entrance of my meadow gives me hope.

The wind pulls at us, not malevolently, but with a personified insistence, and I am thankful for the extra layers.

He stops again and speaks, soft and somber. “She’s here, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” I say, closing my eyes and breathing her in. “All over the meadow.”

“Thought so,” he responds. “I feel her everywhere.” I search his face for melancholy notes, but all I see is a quiet contentment as he too takes a deep hungry breath.

We don’t speak any further as we make our way to the stream down at the bottom of the meadow, lost in our respective thoughts. 

“What’s that?” Rory says, pointing to a bit of broken brush. His eyes flash, the only sign of his excitement, and he rushes over.

It is undeniably an animal trail, well-worn and mid-size, with the telltale flattening of brush and snout-tracked dirt, and it looks to only be a few days old, but I can’t recognize the animal responsible without the expertise of Gale. My skin prickles and I look to Rory, whom is so much like his brother from behind, but he remains oblivious to my thoughts as he bends down to take a closer look at a scuffed up track underneath the grass.

“Let’s take a break here, Rore,” I say. I need to gather my thoughts and prick my brain for conversations Gale and I had about different animal tracks and their transit tendencies. Much of the excited steam from this morning has now settled into a foggy uneasiness, but I manage to hide my scowl from Rory.

“Shall we practice shooting arrows from a tree?” I ask and take a swig of water from the deerskin before handing it to him.

“As much as I like climbin’ trees, Katniss, I prolly should figure out how to shoot an arrow on the ground first. Plus, there’s bound to be somethin’ at the end of that trail,” he says hopefully. He wants to capitalize on his success in finding it in the first place. I push down the anxious acid in my stomach.

“Fine fine, we’ll stick to the ground,” I say, and ready my bow in my hands. “Probably could snag some fish trying to travel last minute up the way, you got the string?”

He gives me a toothy grin and runs the twine through his fingers to make an accordion. “This ain't my first rodeo, Everdeen.”

I stick my hand through the middle, and he pulls the line. We watch as it falls away cleanly, a trick Gale used to play with my sister. “Yeah, well, you barely remembered both your boots the first time we came out here. Since you're feeling so cocky, you get to carry the catch back,” I smirk.

In no time we spear five or six fish and bag some winter greens. We follow the animal trail along the stream as it meanders somewhere off from our town, and I realize that I’m not entirely sure where we are. I haven’t explored the woods in their entirety by a long shot, and the prospect of new ground both frightens and excites me. I pay particular attention to notable landmarks: a dip in the ground, a clustering of trees, a bend in the stream, so that we can backtrack successfully.

The sun sits high in the middle of an overcast sky, flecks of light peeking through the clouds and filtering through the branches of naked trees. We’ve followed the trail for about three miles, and at some point soon we'll have to turn around. Every so often we've stopped and marked up a tree with our hunting knives with patterns like gridlines in a map.

We set our rucksacks on the ground next to a hulking outcropping of rock and I decide now is a good a time as any to give Rory his present. He is quiet when I thrust at him the archery glove I made him out of deer hide. He tries it on, a perfect fit, and his eyes leap up to mine. I make a note of ignoring him as he pushes a darting finger underneath his eye and clenches his jaw.

He was largely ignored in the war, being too young, and as a Seam boy, I don't think he has received many gifts throughout his life.

"Thank you, Katniss," he says softly, and looks everywhere else but at me.

I shrug, and dissipate the awkward stalemate that inevitably occurs when someone Seam receives a gift or act of kindness and I spend the next hour or so helping Rory with his arrow work and sketching a crude map of where we’ve been so far on a piece of waterproof paper from a pad Effie sent me in last week’s train. I pace around him, chewing on a cut of deer jerky as I tweak his posture, and adjust the bow so that he pulls the string to graze his cheek.

“The most important part of all this is the inhale,” I tell him. “You want to be as still as possible, make the arrow an extension of your vision. When you’re ready to shoot, Rory, relax your grip and allow your fingers to slip back. Be natural.”

He lets off a couple of arrows, and they thock into a tree about 25 feet off with loud woody thunks. I smile. He’s come a long way with a bow this year, and my chest swells with warmth.

“Nice work,” I say as I retrieve the arrows. He picks at the string where it connects to the bow and looks down at the ground—neither of us are good at compliments, but we both know as a young man perfecting a craft that he deserves the praise. His face is gentle, just a wisp of a smile, and he studies the ground in silence.

“So where’d you learn to fiddle, Rory?” I pipe up as we meander our way back through the underbrush. Several rabbits swing from each of our bags. 

“Pa taught me, a couple a years before he died,” Rory says, and hikes his heavy game bag to a more comfortable place on his back. “Yer Pa and my Pa… they was in a band that played at weddings and the rare occasional party when they was a little younger, accordin’ to Ma. My uncle worked the violin, and Mr. Thom’s older brother had the banjo. Yers played the cello and a’ course the vocals.”

I take a moment of silence to ruminate on the memory of our fathers. Instead of sadness, the woods, his woods, fill me with a sense of content accomplishment, and I try and imagine what their music might have sounded like. Probably a lot like the night at the festival when Rory played.

It is time for us to start making our way back to Town--our bags are fat with catch and the sun has already started making its descent. There is no way I'm going to give Hazelle any reason to renege her offer for us to hunt instead of do chores, and I fully intend on coming back an hour before sunset, as she instructed.

I look to Rory, who is still eager to shoot and push a reluctant breath through my teeth. Perhaps we can stay out a few minutes more.

“Think you can snatch a flying target? That brush over there looks like a hiding spot to me.” Snow is surely on the forecast for tonight and the next couple of days. The world is awash with early winter overbrightness, and there’s a crisp smell to the air that always comes before heavy precipitation. As a result, it’s been eerily quiet today—critters know early on to hide from storms. Animals have always been smarter than humans in that respect.

“’S worth a shot, prolly,” he says.

I hunker down low, plodding along the creek toward the crop of tall winter grass, my bow hanging loosely in my left hand. My boots are nearly soundless as I shift along the sand until I wait for the right moment to rough up the nest. I pick up a handful of stream side pebbles and with a deep breath, I fling them into the brush with a spray of sound.

Instead of wings beating, the forest erupts with the sound of squealing wails and crunching leaves as a nest of baby boars explode out of the foliage. Their shrieking is God-awful, like babies wailing after being frightened by a loud noise, or worse. I stumble backwards and land hard on my tailbone.

"Katniss!" Rory says, nocking an arrow. I pull myself up, rubbing my sore backside and watch as the pigs scrabble away from us in the opposite direction. Before I have time to realize what he's doing, he lets one fly at them. The squealing that comes after is infinitely worse.

"Rory, no!" I cry. _The mother._ She can't be too far behind, they never are...

And sure enough, in the silent seconds that follow his arrow, we hear a war cry and a thundering crash through the forest as some large body barrels towards us. Her massive, wiry-haired body comes into view, steam pluming from her mouth as she greedily pulls in air with ragged snarls. She's huge, all hair, mud and heaving muscle; I can't even compare her size to any animal that I've come across. Two yellow tusks peek very slightly through her black lips, and her beaded eye swirls around in her face, darting between the two of us to figure out which is the bigger threat.

“R-Rory,” I whisper, pulling an arrow across the string as silently and slowly as I could so as not to attract her attention to me. “Walk away slowly, towards me.” The adrenaline rushing through me did not dilute the familiarity of coaching Peeta away from those angry wild mutts in the Quarter Quell. I see the white of his eye cresting over his shoulder as he tries to look at me while maintaining an open, predatory posture to the sow. He grips his spear with heavy knuckles.

The boar snorts a nasty puff at the ground, pawing at the dirt and crumbled leaves. The air is crisp, and time seems to slow down—both she and I smell the metallic twinge of impending action, and my hunter’s instinct senses her inertia before it happens, so I make the first move. 

It all happens so fast. 

I let the arrow fly, and it whizzes close to Rory’s leg to run clean through her eye, but I know it’s not enough to quell her immediately. She lets out a roaring shriek right as I scream his name, and she dives at his leg with an open mouth. While sow tusks are significantly smaller than their male counterparts, they can still inflict heavy damage with their bite and I watch, mortified, in the few seconds it takes for her teeth to connect with Rory’s calf. The forest is silent, save for the crunch of his leg in her jaws. He is flung to the ground, and she thrashes, but he lands a heavy blow with a rock to her head and she lets go. I've sent three arrows deep into her side at this point, and finally she slows and slumps to the ground, still struggling to get up. 

Still, there is the awful screaming as she mourns the loss of her ability to protect her offspring. Where there’s one boar, there is more, and I cup two sweaty palms underneath Rory’s armpit and pull us fast and far away from the nest. We are living on borrowed time at this point, and I know the sow’s coven will be fresh to our scent soon.

“Rory, come on!” I hiss and try not to watch the blood gush from underneath the fingers of his clamped hand. I pull us toward the stream and rip open his pant leg with my knife. I dip my hands into the water and trickle it over his wounds to wash the dirt out, and the blood pools up from his wounds quicker than I can wash it away. His shaky hands hover over his destroyed leg and he is babbling.

"Katniss, tell my Ma that I'm sorry, shoulda never let Pa die," is the only thing I could make out from the mumbling. I ignore him with a shake of my head and cut off his pant leg. I rush around grabbing some heavy sticks and set about making a splint and tourniquet, tying a swath of my shirt and his pants tight around the largest gash. I dig into our packs for more cloth to rip and tie around his leg to staunch the bleeding. I am thankful it's not a compound fracture, although I know for sure his bones are broken.

"Ka'niss," he says, his face a white sheet. I know he's still not fully-aware of the pain.

"Rory, you need to focus." I am harsh and loud, but it brings his clouded eyes to zoom into my face. "I'm tying this up, but you need to keep pressure on it. Can you do that?"

He nods dumbly, and I watch his pupils dilate and constrict.

"You're not going to like this, but we have to walk a little ways to that outcrop of rock, where I gave you your present. Remember that?" He nods feebly. "It's the best shelter we've got. Are you ready?" He responds with another nod, but I get the sense he has no idea what I'm saying. I wrap his arm over my shoulder and I brace myself to take the brunt of his weight.

"Count of three, Rore," I warn. His skin is incredibly cold and wet, and tiny sweat droplets bead in a perfect line along his forehead and upper lip. 

"Three!" I say and wrench us up and he is screaming. He helps me as much as he can, and we are off, stumbling towards the rock lip, making a slow and lurching tread over the rock bed. By the time I have him propped up against the rock, he is soundless, save for a few breathy whimpers. His shallow breathing worries me. I survey my tourniquet work, tightening the tie and readjusting the stick, and he barely notices.

Snow falls, and it's so quiet I can hear the sound of flakes as they make their buttery flight to the ground. 

"Ka'niss," he slurs, looking at a point beyond my shoulder. He takes a shaky breath. "Prim's my fault. I told her not to go, but she wouldn't listen. Juss like you, stubbernn... n things. I shoulda made her stay."

I grip his shoulders, swallowing the avalanche of sadness that crashes over me. "It's nobody's fault, least of all yours. I need you to focus on staying awake and with me. I am going to get help." I rip off my jacket and cover him with it, along with several branches to conceal his location. I pull out Cinna's music box Effie gave me, flick on the screen to put it on shuffle and stuff a little earbud into his ear.

"Stay awake," I say firmly. He gives me a half nod and closes his eyes, laying his head against the rock. His chest pumps up and down, like he can't get enough oxygen, but I have to trust him to stay away while I'm gone.

"I'm going to go get help, Rore! Hang tight!" I yell.

I am off and running wildly at this point, chasing after the waning sun as it dips toward the mountains in the distant horizon. Ripping off my bag and quiver, I have little regard for what lies before me except getting into town as quickly as possible. I am covered in Rory’s blood and my own pounds in my ears. Snow continues in a steady fall, and I crash through trees. I underestimate a dip in the ground and am flung into the air and roll down a hillside, coming to a stop at the fringe of the meadow with a twist in my ankle between a rock and log. 

"Shit." I pull myself up and despite the crippling pain, I think of Rory lying there alone in the forest with bones sticking out of his calf while wolves circle him and I press on. Victor's Village comes into view, and I realize just how far we had traveled during our hunt today if I end up on this side of Town. The only lights on are inside Haymitch's house.

“H-Haymitch!” I cry, stumbling through his door with a deafening crash and into the living room. I fall to my knees, pain searing through my ankle.

“Ever one for dramatics, aren’t you, Sweetheart? What is it this time?” Haymitch calls from the kitchen and lumbers into view. A slurry smirk is painted on his face for a split second before being replaced by a white sheet of terror. He drops his tin of liquor on the ground.

"Rory's hurt, in the forest--"

“Katniss, what happened?” He is sober in an instant and rushes over to me. “You’re hurt, damnit!” He growls and leans in to pick me up with shaky hands.

“No, not me,” I growl and shove my hands at him. “No time—Rory, forest, blood—” 

“Katniss?” Peeta says in a watery voice from the kitchen doorway, his face creased with panic lines. It’s his look that blows the air from my lungs—I’ve seen it so many times before. He’s holding a dishrag, and a canvas apron is tied loosely around his waist, splotched with sauce, oil, and flour. I watch his eyes flick over me as muscle memory, lingering on the smears of blood and torn shirt, his instincts driving him to constantly assess me for injuries. His eyes are wild, whites flashing like a spooked horse's and briefly I fear that the sight of me covered in blood will bring on a relapse of something sinister. 

At this point, considering his impeccable timing with everything, I shouldn’t be startled that he’s here. District 12 is his home, after all, and as long as I share a part of the world with him, I’ll never escape his presence. 

In a room, he’s always been so big—especially now, as his uneven steps hurriedly thrump over to me. Before I can regain my wits, I am pulled up and into his arms like a baby. 

“No!” I screech and thrash around, but his hold on me is firm and comforting, and my body is a traitor to my mind. He stands there and lets me throw a fit to its conclusion and I feel his muscles bulge. I find my head sinking against his chest. He shifts his weight tentatively to his good leg, making sure not to make sudden movements lest I find a crack to escape or thrash again.

“Katniss, I’m going to lay you down on the couch now,” Peeta says and lumbers over to Haymitch's filthy living room ensemble with me in tow. I bide my time carefully.

As soon as he lets me down, I scramble for the door. “Rory needs help, I need to get Hazelle! We have to go get him, now!” Their lack of urgency has me convinced that they are not going to help me. But he pulls me back and sits me down with the commandeering presence that he sometimes is, and kneels in front of me with my ankle on his knee. With deft fingers, he loosens the tie on my boot, taking it off, and folds up my pant cuff and Gale's leggings. I have little left within me to care that he sees the patchy scarred skin--my own gridlines like those on the gnarled bark of a tree. I hiss as he prods my swollen joint, and he murmurs his apology.

“Same one as before,” I swear I hear him whisper, tapping two fingers in a rhythm on my toes, and gently rolls my foot around with two warm hands. 

“What?” I shriek at him. 

“I’m going to go get some ice,” he replies, leaping to his feet with a metallic click, completely oblivious to what he's said, and trudges off into the kitchen.

“Take a deep breath and tell us what happened,” Haymitch says.

I follow his instruction. “Two miles South of the meadow, we came upon a sow’s nest--I underestimated the danger and Rory's leg is torn up. Weather's getting bad and I couldn’t bring him all the way, so I ran here, and my bad ankle...” I peter out lamely as Peeta comes back in with an armful of first aid supplies. Panic surges again as I think of the snow tirelessly falling and Rory bleeding out.

“Gonna call Thom and Hazelle now, Sweetheart, you just sit tight,” Haymitch growls as he lumbers into the kitchen. 

"It's... not pretty, but doesn't look too bad, thankfully," he says assuredly, rubbing the length of my leg and moving the joint around. "Probably just grade II sprain." Peeta gets to work on wrapping my ankle with his steady hands, and I wonder where he picked up such a healer's skill.

"From Ms. Everdeen," he replies, and it's only then that I realize I've spoken out loud. I need to be more careful around him about saying what's on my mind. His voice is calm and even, lulling like my mother's was when she tended to patients in our Seam kitchen. "She worked in the hospital officially, but people would often come by after hours and seek her skills. Clairen's been her apprentice for a little over a year, and it's hard to not learn a thing or two with a house full of nurses, you know?"

I make a non-committal noise from my gut. 

Oh, I know. I know full-well what it's like living with nurses, and how to purposefully avoid any kind of nurse apprenticeship by running off to the woods with Gale and making the pains to feed my starving family instead. 

But he has the nimble fingers and pleasant bedside disposition for it, I realize. I sketch the soft lines of his face as he ties off a makeshift splint with a broken chair leg (those aren't too hard to come by in Haymitch's house). My face burns and my heart thunders--the War has taken so much from him. He truly could be good at anything that he wanted to do. He has the patience, the skill, and dedication...had such a promising future, before he tossed the bread to me instead of the pig. Just like he said on that hospital bed. My thoughts go dark.

"Katniss," he says, watching me in an intense blue, nothing like the tornado gray they had been on District Thirteen's gurney. He is frozen in a defensive posture, and his eyes flick down to where I have his wrist in a white-knuckled vice grip. 

I have always been emotionally stinted--which is largely a part of the problem--but after the war, it's as if a bunch of fire bombs detonated in my mind. Where I used to be able to feign a collected allure and suffer underneath a silent scowl, I now act entirely on impulse governed by untimely surges of hormones. Even knowing that fills me with rage, and I thrust his arm away from me.

"Katniss--" He says again, but I hear white noise as I struggle to get up from the couch. I swivel my head around to look out the window, and the grime caked on the glass and the bottles scattered on the sill only gives me partial view, but I see enough white to know I have to make a move fast if Rory is going to survive.

Haymitch chooses this moment to come in, and if he's seen anything, he doesn't say, but instead ignores the angry waves pulsating from me. "Called Thom and he's putting together a search party. Hazelle is glad you made it back, and wants you to sta--"

"The hell I will," I growl in a low voice. "Rory's my responsibility! I've been away long enough as it is, and I'll be damned if I'm going to just sit here and wait like a nursemaid while everyone else does all the work!"

"Oh that's right, Sweetheart! Let me just tell everyone to put things on hold while you hobble back out there on your own, and then we'll be looking for two idiots!" Haymitch sneers.

"Idiots? That's funny, coming from you," I snarl and force myself up from the couch. "If by idiots, you mean, the only people actively trying to take care everyone--"

" _Katniss_ ," Peeta hisses. "You need to sit there and let other people help you. The whole district knows you're strong and capable, but you're no use to Rory trying to find him with an injured leg. I'm going out to help find him. And _Haymitch_." He whirls on the old man, who is taken aback. I, meanwhile, just sit there and blink. "Stop antagonizing her. You're not helping."

Haymitch and I look at each other, instantly reminded of training before the Quarter Quell and both wondering the same thing: does he remember me, and what fallout will occur? 

"Katniss, can you remember where you left him and what condition he was in?" Peeta turns to me, expression urgent but softer.

"Yes, I actually tracked our path for later," I say, and fist around in my pants pocket, gritting my teeth as it puts a strain on my ankle, and bring out the waterproof pad I had crudely sketched our trails in. With a grease charcoal, I thicken the lines and scratch an X near the rocks I hid Rory in.

"He's hidden a little ways off a rock bed from the stream, and there are two boulders that jut upwards like this," I mumble while trying to poorly sketch out what mine and Gale's rock look like. "His leg is torn open, she ran him clean through the calf with her tusks, and it's probably broken in a few places, but I made a tourniquet." 

Peeta takes the book from me and stuffs it down the front pocket of his plaid. "Good, this will help. Thank you, Katniss," he says. My name is mesmerizing on his tongue, and I swear he seems to be saying it so frequently as though it will unlock some secret about me. 

Haymitch is silent, and out of the corner of my eye, I see him shake his head. He thinks I cannot see the concern he has for the both of us, and I look away. This is a dangerous game, and I shouldn't be here with Peeta, because bad things always happen so fast--

"Haymitch, get what you need and follow me," Peeta commands. He goes to the closet beside the front door and shoulders on a heavy jacket and stuffs his feet into a pair of black duck boots. I have no time to think, let alone protest before he is sweeping me up and over his shoulder. He is very careful of my leg as he situates me.

"I'm bringing you to my house," he explains as he kicks open the front porch screen. "Haymitch never turns on the heat in his house, and there isn't an actual blanket besides half a table cloth, and I don't think you need to freeze." His feet fall into a rhythm of uneven crunching in the snow as he makes his way across the yard. I lay my head against his shoulder, meaty and soft, and let the smell of basil, dill and tomato sauce encapsulate my senses. I provide a very feeble attempt at rebelling my situation. 

"It's really not necessary, I--"

"Shhh." The door creaks open and I am met with a blast of warm doughy air. His home is a menagerie of delightful smells: cloves of cinnamon and rosemary sprigs sitting in glass bowls, crisp linen curtains washed by Hazelle, vanilla candles and freshly-cut firewood by the fireplace. 

Traitorous body.

He spreads me out on a blue and white couch and pulls a throw off the back to wrap around my legs. "You're cold," he says with a blink. "Hold tight!"

It's only now that I realize I am shaking and wet as the adrenaline dissipates into the comforting heat of his house. I peel off my outer shirt and hear him thunk up the stairs for a brief moment. He comes back with a stack of clothes. A small sallow part of me prays they don't belong to his girlfriend.

"These are for you." He sets a blue-and-gold flannel shirt, pair of woolen socks, and moss green chino pants with a warn grey sweater on top of the coffee table and takes a peek at my ankle. They look warm and soft and inviting, everything that Peeta is.

"Haymitch should be here soon to keep you company," he says while throwing together some food, water, a flashlight and other basic supplies into a leather rucksack. He stops and kneels down next to me and gives me an earnest look. "Please don't leave to search for him. I need you to stay here."

I grip his hand hard. "He can't die," I say, fighting back sudden waterworks. "His life is my responsibility. I took him out there with me, I have to bring him back. If he...if he dies..." I swallow hard and look into the warmth of Peeta's eyes.

"I can't lose another one. He's all I have left." My words are shaky and desperate, but Peeta nods and squeezes my hand, always understanding. It is unclear to me which of them I am actually talking about. 

"We'll get him, Katniss. I promise you that." His hand lingers in mine, and he stares at me just like that night in the arena before I lost him for good. I bite my lip, hard, and have to look away. Anger and regret and embarrassment are welling up within me like water from a sinkhole.

I close my eyes and lean my head back on the armrest and listen to him leave. "God damnit," I say to his furniture. The pain arcs up the nerves of my leg when I move it too fast and brings attention to my predicament. My foot tingles from the ice pack, and the whole right side of my throbs from where I fell.

Curiosity gets the better of me, and I look around the room. A warm beachy interior with subtle signs of a domestic house life makes it apparent that Clairen spends a good bit of time here. White lace throw pillows, soft plush carpet, little tan and blue seashells placed thoughtfully on tabletops and in glass vases make my head swim. I don't look too closely at the pictures of the two of them spread out over the mantle because the mere thought of it makes the acid surge in the bottom of my throat. 

Haymitch stumbles in, loud like an explosion. "Look at you all snug as a bug in a rug." There is a scoff laugh sound as he drops several bags down at the door and falls into a chair, his mouth already at a bottle. He kicks off his trashed slippers and throws both feet on top of the coffee table. His toe wiggles through a hole in his yellow sock. 

"It doesn't take you long to make yourself comfortable either," I sneer.

"Yeah, well, I'm actually over here quite often," he says. "You know how Peeta is, always the make-yourself-at-home type."

I look away from him, knowing he's trying to rile me up. "I'd rather not be here, if I had the choice," I say in a faraway voice.

He sighs, realizing his mistake. "I know, Sweetheart. I don't know how shit always happens to the two of you that makes you go through this so often. God's a cruel author, I suppose."

I grunt, and we fall into our companionable silence, accentuated by one of us making a guttural exclamation every now and again. But I find after fifteen minutes that I need to keep some sort of conversation going because my mind is on a movie-reel-loop about all of the things I should be worried about at the moment.

"Do you know what's out West? Has anyone ever been out that far?" 

Haymitch's eyes critique me. His mentor mind flicks on, and he's watching me intently through a screen making survival decisions down in the arena. "No. West's inhabitable. Prewar nuclear bombs made the whole West Coast irradiated," is all he offers. 

"Irradiated?"

"You think the fire bombs were bad? Just be glad Snow didn't get his hands on any nuclear tech. That shit makes people disappear into thin air in a blink of white light. There weren't even any skeletons to bury."

I am horrified, but I press on. "But that was so long ago. How do you know there aren't people out there if no one's been?"

"Because you don't just go walking on ground soaked with radiation. Fries all of your organs and liquefies them and then you die." He sits up in his chair. "So whatever little solo field trip you have whirrin' around in your brain you can just forget about. I know the stunts you like to pull, and I'm saying no."

I shrug and this infuriates him. "You can't tell me what to do, you're not my mentor anymore."

"I may not be your mentor, but you need someone to talk some damn sense into you every once in a while," he says evenly and nods the bottle to my leg. "You're not going anywhere on that for a while."

But even as he speaks, I look out the window and watch the snow and the sun fall, my thoughts encircling an escape plan.


	7. Crutch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I mention this was a long, terrible, agonizing, slow, tumultuous burn?
> 
> If not:  
> This is a long, terrible, agonizing, slow, tumultuous burn.
> 
> PS, I always thought Peeta should have automail instead of a super lame plastic prosthetic, so do with that what you will. *headnod to Hiromu Arakawa*
> 
> (If you want to listen to some soundtrack inspiration: https://soundcloud.com/tobearsir/missing-parts)

.:Seven: Crutch:.

It is a dreadfully slow and painful four hour wait that mentor and victor spend in each other's company since Peeta left. Finally, with a haughty indignant snort, Haymitch exclaims my fidgetting and muttering is insufferable to be around, digs around in his pockets and flicks into my lap a patch wrapped in a little piece of foil. I let it crinkle around in my fingers and shoot him a skeptical look. 

At least he lasted four hours. Way longer than I'd give him credit for.

"It'll take the edge off, trust me," he offers. "Just unwrap that little puppy, slap it on your arm, then sit back and enjoy the ride." He pulls out another and 'demonstrates' where and how to put it on and gives me a toothy grin as he stuffs a pinch of chew into his bottom lip. I give him a disgusted scowl and look down at what is no doubt a Capitol painkiller. 

Normally, I'm beyond hesitant to administer any of Haymitch's "healing advice," considering the methods he uses to escape his problems, let alone anything Capitol-made, but between the throbbing of my leg and the visions I have of swimming in Rory's blood, it doesn't take me too long to rip the packet open and apply the patch onto the meaty part of my shoulder. It only takes five minutes for everything to slow down to a toddler's pace. I can't ever say the Capitol did anything half-assed when it comes to feeling good.

You're weak, a small voice says in the back of my mind. Look at the Mockingjay, a symbol of strength and freedom for the entire country, reduced to a blithering anxious cripple chasing the dregs of the past in a slurry of drugs and distractions. So emotional and explosive, it chids.

Perhaps I am weak, I counter, closing my eyes and letting the air escape my lungs long and slow through my nostrils. Maybe I'm all those distasteful things. But I've been strong enough for everyone else for too long, and if I fizzle out, who the hell cares? 

"Oh, Sweetheart," he says as an aside, his voice bringing me outside of myself, and I watch as his mouth moves and doesn't exactly match up with the sound--it's a second or two off--"thought I'd tell you now, they make these things with a teeny bit of trackerjacker venom. In small doses, it acts as a numbing anesthetic. If you start seeing things, it's normal. Just ride it out."

I know I should be panicking, and my brain floods with memories from the last time I had the venom running through my veins: Caesar Flickerman hosting a documentary inside a forest, chasing me like an animal, my disembodied singing inside a concrete shower after murdering yet another high profile politician...but they're foggy and less intense than I would remember with a sober mind, like a faroff fairy tale or secondhand account I'd read in a fiction book. I swim through them, fixated on the notion that after all this time, I should be able to trust Haymitch enough that he wouldn't do anything to kill me.

And if I were to die, would it be the worst thing, after everything else?

 _Yes, it absolutely would._ An amalgam of Finnick's and Prim's voices pipe up from the oncoming fog. 

"Stuffsssssafe, right?" I think I say, trying to get up but sinking further into the couch. I want to laugh--everything is so giddy and warm. It can't be possible to feel so weightless.

"Well, it's been outlawed with the fall of the old Capitol, anything with trackerjackers, that is, but consider it a hand-me-down from us veteran Mentors. 'S how we used to get through some of the more... unforgiving Games."

"Ah," is all I can say.

"Hell, I don't even remember an entire year after Snow killed my family," my father's voice says matter-of-factly. 

The lights in the room become fuzzy and fade into a soft golden swirl of color, and I suddenly find myself lounging in the grass beside my father's lake. I cannot see Haymitch, nor anything else, but I somehow know that I am still there. My father's presence is so strong, like the lazy heat of a barn in the summer, but he's right off-screen. I run my fingers through blades of grass, and feel Prim's slender ones tie braids in my hair. She's humming something, or maybe that's me.

"Father?" I murmur. My eyes trail further down the bank and I spot the clean plane of Gale's back as he and Rory flick stones across the water's surface, but the vision is patchy, like a mosaic.

"Nah, Sweetheart," Haymitch says in my father's voice. He may have been baritone, but there was nothing common about the sounds that came out of his throat when he opened it up to sing, and I cling to this sound. "But you can see why all of us mentors visit this place, hm?"

"If I had my choice, I'd never leave," I sigh, letting dandelions tickle my face. I see Finnick's shadow bent over in the sand, wriggling his fingers along the sides of his face to a bundle of giggling blankets.

I look for Rue, seeing as everyone else I care about is here, and sweep my fuzzied gaze across the landscape before remembering the trees. Her skinny leg swings lazily from a tree as she pops a few berries into her mouth while reading a book.

"Well, that's the thing, Katniss," Acker Everdeen says. "A lot of them, the mentors before me, they never did. This stuff is great for a getaway every now-and-again, but it's ruined too many lives. Some of them never came back." My father fades into the background noise.

I am floating on my back along the river, and the sounds of my father's band mingle with the song of a flock of mockingjays. I open my eyes to buttercream clouds tracking fat trails across a pink-orange-amber sky. Peeta's curls come into view, and I feel his fingers dance along my back underneath the surface. He strokes my hair, comforting and soft, like one does to a sleeping child, or someone dying. 

His murmur ripples up from the depths of the riverbed. "One time, I spent three days mixing paint until I found the right shade for sunlight on white fur," he says. "You see, I kept thinking it was yellow, but it was much more than that. Layers of all sorts of color, one by one." The words echo in my brain and take a while to settle, but I remember this. I rip myself up from the water, and he's gone. The water has a slight red tent to it, like droplets of Peeta's watercolors as he washes the paint off of his brush in a water cup.

I watch white shapes converge and divide in the distance, along the silhouetted tree line, dancing slowly like reeds in the stream. His silhouette is bright as sunflecks on a rock, Peeta's, the shadows of unruly curls pushed by an unseen breeze, and he turns to me, hands outstretched. Reaching, pulling for me. 

Haymitch's voice, far-off down a tunnel, pushes at me. "Don't go too far away from me, Sweetheart. There's a lot of dark places just outside the borders, and I can't get you if you run off, you hear? It goes bad real quick."

I crawl towards Peeta still, and as I do, it gets warmer, stickier. I feel like I'm crawling back to a womb. Outlines blur, and everything in my mind's eye meshes together. Dough in a mixing bowl. His bed full of pillows and blankets. I want to dive head-first and get mixed slowly into whatever this is.

The door cracks open, and his heavy uneven tread rattles the floorboards. A rush of cold air is pulled in with the vacuum effect of the front door opening. Peeta's voice explodes in my ear. 

"Katniss! Haymitch! We found him! He's okay! Your map led us right there!"

Reality blotches into black-red as I stare into the back of my eyelids. His words are hurried and breathless. He ran here to tell us the news, and my stomach flips.

"Katniss?"

Our mentor has a coughing fit, and a brief period of silence ensues as Peeta absorbs the scene. My surroundings come back to me in drops of paint in water.

"Haymitch!? What'd you do to her?" 

"Gave her something to calm her nerves," he says with a shrug and lights up a cigarette. Peeta rushes over and crushes the lit end with his finger and thumb. His expression is scrunched up in a snarl. "Not in the house, you know that." He turns his attentions back to me.

I hear the crinkling of the packet on the table behind my head and a sound of disgust. "Traqpaq? Seriously?" The disappointment emanating from him churns my insides.

"Don't you go around runnin' your mouth, Boy, or I'll have the whole District lined up outside my door with their hands out."

"I can't believe you, Haymitch. I leave you alone for three fucking seconds," he scoffs as he watches me. Is it possible to sink further into the couch? Maybe I can escape this whole debacle and wake when it's over. "Or, actually, I can. This is just the kind of shit you pull, isn't it?"

All I can think of is how dirty curse words sound coming from the his soft boyish lips.

"It was this or two dirty pieces of Seam trash tearing up your beautiful house trying to kill each other," he guffaws. 

"You both are so fucking bad for each other," he snarls as he props up my drooping head underneath a steady hand. It is replaced by one of Clairen's throw pillows, stiff and too decorative for my tastes. The idea makes me want to laugh--my _tastes_? My mouth feels full of cotton balls. I hope it's a smile he sees on my face and not a swollen grimace--all my muscles feel numb, so I have no idea what they're doing to my face. 

"You have no idea, Boy," Haymitch replies, chuckle-gagging on a swig of white liquor. "I could say the same for the two of you."

"What does that even mean?" Peeta's voice is close, and his face blots out the light overhead. "Katniss, Sweetheart, hey, can you see me?" I'm pretty sure I imagine the pet name, but he doesn't blink twice as he moves a single finger across the field of my vision. I follow it with sluggish eyes.

I nod slowly. "Peeta..." Is all I can manage.

He looks relieved, although the drug makes his face look like candle wax melting. "At least you're coming down. Can you move?" How does he know anything about drugs? 

"Hell yeah she can move. She's made of some firecracker survivalist stuff. Normal soft girls would be stuck on that couch for the rest of the night." Haymitch shrugs and gets up. We all know who he's talking about, although I don't understand why he is saying this. Peeta's lips are drawn up in a thin pursed line. As Haymitch stretches his arms above his head, several of his joints creak. We both watch him stumble around in search of something to drink. "Listen, I'm not going to go into any intimate detail, but when Sweetheart's in a bit of pain, far be it from me to be the one to deny her anything. Call it a long-standing history of debt, and I'm her lifelong broker."

Peeta whirls back on me with a look of fire. "So you do know each other then?" He says, a bit hurt. No doubt he's recalling the conversation we had at Sae's birthday. 

"We're Seam," is all I offer. I try to shrug, but I don't know if I actually pull it off.

There is a crack in the air, like lightning pulling over head--soundless and nearly imperceptible, but my body is finely-tuned to such a dangerous frequency. Peeta's body becomes rigid, and he cracks the knuckles of one hand with the flick of a wrist. It's a nervous tic that is such a stark crack in his put-togetherness, it cuts off the lazy swirl of blood through my limbs and the world starts to speed up again.

"Since when has being Seam become a hot selling point?" He says nastily. Clarity hits me and I see that his skin is wet and shiny, and the muscles in his arms are strained with the hard clenching of fists. I sit up abruptly, the fogginess pulling down my limbs and pooling into my toes to manifest as dread. "Because, if I remember my childhood, that wasn't necessarily the case. In fact, my mother always said anyone from the Seam was the scum of our District. Digging through trash and dirtying up the place." 

He's never said something like this before, and I know now that he is morphing into someone else; Snow's mutt. I can't prevent the panic from taking hold. All because of me. The missing piece to his memories, his hijacking, his pain. This is all wrong--I am both floating a half-inch above the cushions and tensing up to defend myself from an attack for the second time today. I know my reflexes are incredibly off.

Haymitch barks at him, forever my watchdog, but I see his fear. Peeta smells it and jerks back around. "You watch that lip, Boy. Seems you've forgotten your mama's way of thinking was never very progressive."

Another shift as Peeta punts a pillow across the room with a swift kick, the metal gears in his leg whirring from the force. It thwacks against the wall and knocks a picture of a white wicker chair on a sand dune onto the ground. "This is great. I have to go meet my girlfriend at the train at dawn tomorrow, and here I am, dealing with this stupid shit instead," he stalks off into the kitchen, footsteps stomping on the tile. I have a clear view of him as he clutches the hand rail on the oven hard enough to snap it in two. 

Panic roils into anger like lava spilling over me. I don't know if I prefer him as a violent menace or sniveling baby. "I never asked for your fucking help, not once!" I find myself saying and pull myself up from the couch by the armrest, knocking over the coffee table with my knee. I watch Peeta's clothes spill to the floor in a mockery of his caring gesture. The adrenaline and painkiller cocktail helps me to ignore the dull spike of pain shooting up my leg. 

"In fact, I was just trying to get someone to help me bring back my partner! To help me make sure he survives! So that my District can survive another hungry Seam winter. Do you have any idea what that's like, Peeta?" I shriek. I'm being petty, and playing a dangerous game, and I can see the uncertainty swirling around his brain in a dangerous mixture of facial features, but I can't stop myself. A single twitch rips up his entire body, spurring me on. "That's all I've ever tried to do. That's all I've ever tried to do!"

"Listen, Sweetheart, take it easy," Haymitch warns, crouching in between Peeta in the kitchen and me by the sofa with his arms outstretched. "Don't get overconfident." 

Peeta clenches the sides of his head and pulls at his sweaty hair. He drips down to the floor as spilled wine with his back against the cabinets. He bangs the back of his head into the oven with increasing intensity, rattling the glass containers on the counter. His voice is a tinny whine, like a spoiled Townie child. "God, I just... please both of you, get out--"

"I'm going to see how Rory is," I yell, ripping off the chair leg splint and shoving on my boots that Peeta set neatly beside the front door. His first aid handiwork clatters to the ground in something more final than any goodbyes we've shared. I quell the small part of me that worries about him injuring himself and wrench open the screen door so that it thwacks against the wall.

I leap out into the yard, now covered with a couple of inches of snow and roll onto my injured leg, but I don't cry out. I crawl part of the way until I can struggle to my feet and avoid the long gaping stride of his footsteps as he ran through the snow.

"Sweetheart, wait!" I hear Haymitch fall down the porch steps behind me, but I ignore him and press on in the direction of Town.


End file.
